Infamous
by Default Jane
Summary: Udina runs a private prison where Shepard and Samantha meet as they end up working together for his company which employs prisoners. Samantha comes to realize there's more to Shepard than meets the eye, in good and in bad.
1. Once upon a lawn bloody

_Author's notes: This was supposed to be a spooky &funny Halloween-special, but it turned just weird and way longer than it was supposed to be, so... oops I did it again, sorry about that. This story got started when I was watching my friend TheMulletWhisperer play a game called "Viscera cleanup detail" (I recommend checking out a gameplay video of it if you're not familiar with it, it'll make the first chapter a way better read lol) and we started joking around about Shepard and Samantha working in that setting and then... my hand slipped and here we are. :)_  
 _Oh, also, if you enjoy "easter egg hunts", I have incorporated lines from horror movies into the story, some better known than others, let me know if you spot any and I'll give you an air guitar._

* * *

Samantha exhaled in exasperation when she heard the loud crashing noise accompanied by Shepard yelling "Oh-whoa-whoa-whoooa!"

"You had better be singing 'What's new pussycat', because if you're not...!" Samantha threatened.  
"It wasn't my fault, it's that fucking chair!" Shepard argued.

"Yeah, what were they thinking putting chairs around a table in the dining room," Samantha muttered sarcastically as she dunked her mop into the bucket of water to clean it up. She found herself doing that constantly, the generous amounts of blood, internal organs and bone fragments clinging to the mop making it spread the mess rather than clean it if she didn't. The fact that Shepard was constantly kicking over the buckets of water or the bins reserved for biohazardous materials and trash didn't help make this job go over any quicker.

"Fuck this," Shepard growled, grabbed the chair and carried it outside. Samantha frowned and was about to question it when she heard a noise from the backyard. When she looked outside, she saw Shepard had tossed the chair into a woodchipper, spraying splinters over the fence and into the neighboring yard.

"What the hell are you doing!" Samantha hissed, peeking her head through a window.  
"Well, don't try to tell me this isn't efficient."

"Did you ever stop to think that maybe the neighbors won't appreciate what you're doing?"  
"Not my problem, I'm in charge of the shape of this yard, not theirs," Shepard shrugged nonchalantly and headed back into the house, climbing upstairs.

Samantha sighed again. It was bad enough that she'd been assigned this unpleasant scene to clean up, it was even worse when she'd been assigned a partner who clearly didn't care about the consequences of their actions. Not to mention that Shepard was the clumsiest person Samantha had ever met, she was constantly making the mess worse, tracking blood and dirt all over the place.

 _What the hell was that?_ Samantha wondered internally at the odd thudding noise she heard.

"Oh, good Lord! Shepard are you seriously throwing the bodies out the window!" she exclaimed.  
"Saves me the trouble of hauling them downstairs and dripping blood all over the floor," Shepard explained.

"Well, yeah, but..."  
"Look, we don't have the time to be respectful toward the dead right now," Shepard huffed as she shouldered another body and began to push it out the window. It got stuck to the frame.

"Besides... these people... were obviously... fucked up... and probably... deserved to die a horrible, horrible death," Shepard continued, pausing her words as she repeatedly rammed herself shoulder first into the body, determined to tackle it out the window.

Admittedly, that was something Samantha couldn't completely disagree with; the notes and diaries they'd discovered scattered around the house had revealed some really strange things about the former occupants. Not to mention the questionable art and other collectibles featuring serial killers and mass murderers -fictional and real.

Samantha had found some of the books at the scene had been about Shepard, and she'd discarded them before Shepard had seen them. She didn't react well to stumbling upon old articles regarding herself, not that Samantha could blame her for it. Everyone knew who Shepard was, whether she liked it or not, but being reminded of it was something she had control over. Out of sight, out of mind.

Over twenty years ago, Shepard had been a marine, one of the best there'd ever been. The flip side of the coin was that with such skills came responsibilities and missions that were so important they couldn't be tasked to anyone else. For the longest time, no one had batted an eye. As far as the public was concerned, Shepard was just another marine doing her job, protecting her home. It wasn't until someone had hacked into classified intel regarding the government's top-secret missions and made the records public that she'd become infamous.

The Alliance had needed a scapegoat to blame for the deaths of thirteen people. Since whoever had hacked into the files had gone ahead and connected Shepard to the incident, the officer who had sent her on this mission in the first place had decided to name her as the "mentally unstable rogue marine" who was responsible for the massacre.

Unfortunately for Shepard, the things her commanding officer, Saren Arterius, had said in his statement and his testimony were all true. The only lie by omission was Saren leaving out the part of his own involvement -which he was allowed to get away with since he couldn't be asked to incriminate himself by babbling about classified operations. The fact remained that Shepard had killed thirteen people that day, in cold blood, because that had been her mission; butcher a group of people who didn't seem significant as far as political influence went, but whose deaths would inevitably result in an all-out war which would provide the Alliance a perfect excuse to swoop in to "preserve the peace" and therefore strengthen their own status as a military force.

So, here Shepard was, branded a mass murderer, serving her time, working in a cleanup detail for a man who'd invested in the private prison for free labor.

The body Shepard had hauled to the window finally nudged free from the frame when Shepard tackled it, but unfortunately, Shepard hadn't exactly thought this through and ended up following right behind it.

"I'm okay!" Shepard called out once being able to breathe after having the wind knocked out of her.  
"We should've started cleaning from the top, that way it wouldn't matter if we tracked blood through here," Samantha said, grabbed the bucket of water and carried it upstairs.

"You could've said that earlier!" Shepard humphed as she followed Samantha up -leaving behind a trail of bloody footprints- and dragged the last body from the bathroom, through the hallway and to the window.  
"I did, but you were too busy mopping the damn lawn to pay attention!" Samantha snapped and dropped the wet mop to the floor with a resounding smack.

"It was getting dark, I had to do it then or I would've missed the spots with blood out there," Shepard reasoned.

Samantha agreed that it was probably better that way; even when the lighting hadn't been poor, Shepard had managed to repeatedly slip into various internal organs splattered across the lawn, Samantha dreaded to imagine how much worse it would've been if she hadn't been able to see at all. It had been funny the first few times but got old fast.

"Do you ever wonder if this is all there is to life? Like... what if there's another version of us somewhere doing something completely different?" Shepard wondered, and Samantha blew out a breath.  
"Useless speculation, who cares?" she said.

"I just think it would be fun. Maybe I'm an astronaut. Or a pirate! Ooooh, or a space pirate!"  
"And maybe I'm the queen of something, but like I said, who cares, it doesn't make any difference, the fact still remains I'm here, cleaning up a murder scene with the clumsiest janitorial shitlord I've ever met, namely, you," Samantha grumbled.

"Well, that was hurtful," Shepard commented, but her voice remained casual and light. Samantha was convinced it was impossible to hurt Shepard's feelings because Shepard was probably a psychopath who didn't even have feelings to begin with. That was the only explanation Samantha could think of for how easy-going Shepard was about everything. She didn't even have to think twice before callously tossing dead people out the window and shoving their bodies into a woodchipper, no one with a normal brain and a sound mind would even consider doing that. Or perhaps Shepard had just seen it all and was no longer fazed by anything.

Shepard had been doing this for half her life, Samantha was the rookie, Shepard was the pro... which was kind of difficult to believe when looking at how poorly Shepard had been performing recently. But, that was probably because she'd been doing this for so long that she didn't care anymore.

"My point is, it doesn't matter if there are alternate universes or not, the fact still remains that we're stuck here."  
"Wow, that's depressing," Shepard interjected and sprayed the bloody bathroom down using the shower, the water quickly turning into a pink foam that gathered and stuck to the drain that got clogged with bone fragments shortly.

"So, if you're quite done dicking around," Samantha continued, "I would rather focus on getting this place cleaned so we can leave, we should've gotten this done by now."  
"I know, and I'm sorry, I didn't expect there to be so much slipping," Shepard apologized, and for once, she managed to sound serious and sincere.

"Tell you what, let me make this up to you when we get back. Take a shower with me, using my water rations, I'll even wash your hair for you," Shepard then suggested.  
"No thank you, with my luck, you'd just _slip_ again, and I'd have to clean up _your_ skull fragments from the bathroom floor."

"Your loss," Shepard said. She knelt by the drain and picked up the fragments of bones piled up there and after carefully considering it for half a second, tossed them into the toilet.

"Do bones float?"  
"No."  
"Excellent," Shepard said and flushed.

Samantha didn't bother questioning her or scolding her or even rolling her eyes at the weird redhead's antics. Instead, she focused on getting her part of the job done while Shepard happily sang a poorly paced version of _99 bottles of beer on the wall_ , clumsily replacing "beer" with "bones" and replacing the beer falling from the wall with numerous synonyms for flushing bone fragments down the toilet.

A couple of hours later, the sun was slowly beginning to rise, and they were finally nearly done with the job. They carried their cleaning supplies out of the house and checked the yard one more time to make sure they hadn't missed any spots.

"And we... are… finished. Yeah, teamwork!" Shepard said and held her fist up, expecting a bump. Samantha groaned and tiredly bumped her knuckles with Shepard's.

"Oh, my fucking God! My lawn! What the fucking shit! IT'S EVERYWHERE! WHAT THE SHIT!" an outraged male voice began screaming from behind the fence.

"And that's our cue," Shepard said, grabbed Samantha's wrist and dragged her with her as she made a run for it.


	2. Blood on her name

The walls of Samantha's little dorm room were cluttered with "Employee of the month"-plaques, the rest of the space mostly undecorated. There was no room for much anything other than the narrow bed in the back of the room and one small desk. The kitchen consisted of a hot plate and a mini fridge placed on the counter opposite to the desk. She -and no one else as low on the food chain as she was despite her numerous achievements- didn't have a personal shower, when she wanted to get cleaned, she needed to use the communal showers which allowed for ten minutes of water. It wasn't anywhere near enough to get properly cleaned, especially not after as messy a job as this one had been. Shepard's offer to let Samantha use her shower was growing beyond tempting.

Samantha sighed as she made her way over to the floor where Shepard's cabin was.

"What took you so long?" Shepard grinned as she answered the door.  
"Don't start, I already regret coming here," Samantha said.

"Again, that's very hurtful, you know."  
"I'm sorry. I just hate having to be in this situation. Especially with you."

"Why, what's wrong with me?" Shepard asked somewhat sarcastically, knowing perfectly well she left a lot to be desired as far as being normal and easy to deal with went.  
"You mean besides the fact that you're a mass murderer?"

"We all go a little mad sometimes."  
"Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough."

"Well, if it's any consolation, I never killed anyone in the shower so fear not and let's get to business, which was... me washing your back," Shepard wiggled an eyebrow.  
"No, the deal was me taking a shower using your rations, _alone_ ," Samantha narrowed her eyes at Shepard.

"If you say so, Sam."  
"Do not call me that."

"Whatever you want, Sammy."

"Stop. Go sit in the corner and face the wall or something, no peeking, you owe me this," Samantha then said, and Shepard gave in, holding her arms up in a surrendering gesture before graciously turning to face away as Samantha went to undress and stepped into the shower.

Shepard would have remained subtly creeping on Samantha had the phone on the far side of the cabin not rang. Sighing, she retreated from the room and walked over to the phone.

No calls could be made with the phone and all the incoming ones were screened before they were put through to her. She already knew this wouldn't be a pleasant conversation to be had since there really was only one person who called her and right now she could think of only one reason for him to be calling. Momentarily, she considered simply not answering, but she knew it wasn't a permanent solution, so she picked up.

"Commander Shepard," she answered, knowing that using her rank would undoubtedly annoy the man calling. To her disappointment, he was too furious to pay attention to that.  
"Of all the fucked up stunts you have pulled, this is the worst! We'll have to pay ourselves sick to keep the neighbor quiet!"

"Good evening to you too, Udina. I take it the inspector of the scene wasn't happy either."

Udina grumbled for a moment before answering, obviously not happy about having to admit the job itself had been done well.

"The scene was immaculate but that doesn't excuse the way you did it, you and that new girl will bankrupt me at this rate!"  
"That sounds like a you-problem which means I don't care, I've done my part, what you do with the rest is up to you."

"If you think you can just...!"  
"If I wanted to listen to an asshole, I'd fart," Shepard interrupted and ended the call while Udina was still in the middle of his scathing rant.

She hung up the phone to disconnect and then moved the receiver onto the table to prevent him from calling back, all he'd get was the tone telling him the line was busy. She then went to the far wall and pushed her shoulder against a stack of heavy boxes she'd piled up to hide the doorway to the cabin next to hers. A doorway she'd illegally made herself over the years. It was a miracle it hadn't been discovered yet. Shepard retrieved the item she'd stolen from the job, a scalpel she'd had to very carefully tape on her calf. She'd gotten a few minor cuts, but didn't care. She entered the cabin and undid the tape holding the scalpel in place.

Shepard had been a model inmate for almost two decades and some of the guards had been here for as long as she had; that had given her a lot of time to build trust and flimsy friendships with some of the guards. Most of them were assholes, but there were a few good ones who had by now begun giving Shepard the benefit of the doubt. When it came time to pat her down after a job, the guards she'd gotten somewhat friendly with didn't bother doing a very good job of the pat down. They assumed Shepard wouldn't want to risk losing her comfy position by doing something as stupid as trying to smuggle something from the job back to her cabin.

Shepard had grown bolder with the items over the years, but she hadn't tried smuggling back something like a weapon until today. Frankly, she didn't even want to think about the consequences if she'd get caught with all this but at the same time, it would not make a difference really because what were they gonna do, add another hundred years to her sentence? She was already serving thirteen consecutive life sentences, she doubted there was much more they could do to her. She supposed they could move her back to the lower levels and keep her there indefinitely or until she died, but realistically, she didn't see that happening.

Udina was a dick but he recognized efficient workers, and efficient workers meant profit. When he'd invested in the prison, he'd done so solely for the reason of having a stream of free labor available to him at any time, but with free labor, you really got what you paid for. So, to encourage the inmates to perform well during their assignments, Udina had implemented a good old "Employee of the month"-program, which didn't actually mean much; you got a lame plaque and you got to choose between extra water rations for the shower (if you were high enough on the food chain to have your own shower), a decent meal instead of the nutrient paste the inmates were usually served, a pack of cigarettes, or a bar of chocolate.

Shepard had been here for over twenty years and she'd seen it all, Udina's incentive wasn't working as motivation for her anymore. At this point, she was intentionally looking to get herself demoted just so she'd have something to work for, to make her way back to the top.

"Shepard?"

She swiveled around, startled, and stood in silence for several seconds as she and Samantha regarded each other.

"Hey! So... does this look... as bad as it looks?" Shepard laughed awkwardly.  
"What is this place?" Samantha exclaimed softly as she looked around the space connected to the main room via the hidden door.

"Well, um... it's my... museum...?" Shepard trailed off slowly. Technically, this wasn't her space, she'd simply taken it upon herself to expand -without permission- since discovering that the cabin next to hers had been empty for decades now. She didn't worry about someone possibly getting moved to the cabin, these levels were restricted to "loyal employees", and at the moment, Shepard was the only one who had been locked up in here long enough to have gotten the "honorable" title. Everyone else either got out after serving their sentence or died before they made it this far.

Shepard didn't know how or why she'd been so resilient. The conditions she and the other inmates had to work under sometimes were downright potentially lethal. If there wasn't an immediate danger like getting run over by a truck while picking trash from a roadside, there were scenes that exposed the workers to chemicals and radiation, and nobody batted an eye.

Shepard had seen a lot of her "colleagues" get cancer or tumors in vital organs, then there were those who'd inhaled so many chemicals they could no longer breathe properly. Shepard didn't know why none of it seemed to affect her, she hadn't been given the opportunity to take any better precautions against the dangers than the others had. Not that she was complaining, although at times, dying at a young age of a disease did feel like a better offer than living here for the rest of her life. That, or commit suicide, but she'd never been the suicidal type.

"You know how we have to clean up a bunch of interesting scenes?" Shepard began her explanation.

"Interesting scenes" was one way of putting it. There were crime scenes, boring industrial scenes, factories, military bases, sometimes even something as mundane as a retirement homes or roadsides. The work was always the same, but at least the places changed.

"So, whenever I've stumbled into something interesting, I've, um..."  
"You've stolen things from the job sites," Samantha said.

"You say 'steal', I say 'salvage'. It was all gonna go into the incinerator anyway."  
"That, or a conveniently placed woodchipper," Samantha interjected, and Shepard barked a laugh.

"What can I say, I'm a collector. I'd be really bored without my collection, and you know how it is. All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl."  
"You're a disturbed hoarder, and I'm leaving now and you are going to stay away from me. I mean it," Samantha said and held up a finger to emphasize her point, realizing it was rather ridiculous; if Shepard really wanted to do something to her, pointing a finger at her would hardly be enough to stop her.

"If I wanted to kill you, I would've just shoved you into the woodchipper earlier," Shepard shrugged nonchalantly, and Samantha blinked at her, unable to come up with a response.

"That was a joke."  
"Was it though?" Samantha narrowed her eyes at Shepard.

"And yeah, I'm a collector, but I'm not disturbed," she shook her head and smirked.  
"Oh, yes, you just happen to collect items from murder houses instead of collecting stamps like normal people."

"I cannot believe that you are in all seriousness telling me you consider stamp collectors normal people."  
"I'm leaving."

"Sam! Please, don't tell anyone about this."  
"I won't, for as long as you promise that if you get caught, you will not tell anyone I knew about this, because the last thing I need is to be considered your accomplice in... whatever the hell this is," Samantha said, gesturing at the room.

"Deal."

* * *

"So, you never told me what you are in for," Shepard said as she vigorously ran the toilet brush around the bowl. This time the job site was as near as in Warden Kuril's office. Usually, the staff's offices were handled by the newcomers, but Kuril enjoyed having Shepard do jobs that were well below her paygrade. Shepard was certain he was watching through a monitor in some other room, jerking off to the sight of her scrubbing his bathroom right now. He'd taken pride and pleasure in trying to break her spirit, and Shepard had always been more than happy to disappoint him by never letting him see anything but flawless work ethic and results from her.

"I worked as a comm specialist for the Alliance which meant I got to monitor a lot of comm traffic... most of it classified intelligence about black ops. I came across something regarding the Alliance funding the terrorist group Cerberus to enable them to cause unrest at certain sectors so that the Alliance would have a reason to interject themselves into the situation, and I took it upon myself to forward the intel to a reporter because I thought what they were doing was wrong. They were killing innocent civilians just for an excuse to insert themselves into the situation."

"Well, democratically elected governments aren't gonna overthrow themselves, Traynor," Shepard drawled but Samantha ignored her terrible humor.  
"And as it happens, leaking classified intelligence is considered treason, but I'm guessing you already knew that."

"Huh," Shepard mumbled as she thought about it. For a while she considered that perhaps Samantha had been the one who had leaked the intel regarding the operation which had led to Shepard's prosecution, but that had been over twenty years ago. She doubted Samantha and her legal team had managed to drag out the proceedings for a ridiculously long time, she couldn't have been the one responsible. That, or she'd served a large part of her sentence elsewhere, which was also a possibility, Shepard supposed.

"I got off with a relatively light sentence, eight years and a fifty thousand credit fine," Samantha shrugged and went back to wiping mirror above the sink, having to wonder how the hell did Kuril manage to get such impressive amounts of fingerprints on it unless he spent hours just passionately fondling his own reflection.

"So, when are you getting out?" Shepard then asked to keep the conversation going.  
"Nine months left," Samantha responded.

"You haven't been here for more than a few months, where were you before?"  
"In a government run prison. I was offered a chance to transfer here for the rest of my sentence, and I took it because I'd been told good things about the accommodations and the possibility to work."

"Was it everything you hoped for?" Shepard chuckled, already knowing it couldn't have been.  
"Exceeded my expectations," Samantha said sarcastically.

Private prisons had always had a bad reputation and for a good reason. This prison, lovingly named Omega, was no different. The accommodations were better than in most prisons and there was a certain freedom to it because the cells were more like small apartments than typical prison cells, but the downside was that the expenses were cut even after they'd been kept to a minimum.

That showed particularly well in the fact that the majority of the staff was at the very least incompetent and partly comprising of freaks who'd offered to work for almost free just for the opportunity to make their fantasy of working in a women's prison a reality. That in turn translated to inmates getting beaten, degraded and raped on a regular basis. The allegations -if anyone even bothered making one anymore- were never put on any record and certainly never investigated.

There also were no decent meals, only nutrient paste which contained just enough calories to keep an inmate from starving. If one wanted a hot meal, they would have to either earn it by working hard enough to become employee of the month, or buy it themselves from the commissary, if they could afford it.

In other words, if the truth were ever put on the pamphlet, no one would be volunteering to come to Omega.

"So, what about you, how long..." Samantha began to ask but cut herself off upon realizing how idiotic the question was. Shepard laughed and pursed her lips as she thought about it.

"Let's see, I was given thirteen life sentences... or seventy-five years minimum per sentence, so that makes a total of... what, nine hundred and seventy-five years? Minus the twenty or so I've already served, so... nine and a half centuries. Will you wait for me when you get out?" Shepard batted her eyelashes.

"Suuure, you seem totally worth the wait," Samantha commented, her tone heavy with sarcasm as she threw the wet cloth in Shepard's face.

"So, have any plans for this fine evening?" Shepard asked jokingly once they were done with Kuril's office and moved onto the guards' break room.

"Well, I was thinking about having a nice beef wellington for dinner, wash it down with an expensive fancy wine and then go to sleep in my king size Tempur-bed, warm and cozy underneath my luxurious goose down blanket," Samantha said, and Shepard laughed.

"And here I thought I could entice you into spending an evening with me by offering you some of this prison's finest toilet hooch."  
"If you honestly thought I would drink something that you've made in a toilet, you are crazier than everyone says you are," Samantha guffawed and rolled the cart containing the cleaning supplies through the door which Shepard held open for her.

"Would you have said yes if I'd called it prison wine?"  
"Now we'll never know, will we?" Samantha smirked.

"How about dinner then? I admit I don't have any beef wellington handy but I do have an impressive collection of contraband tasty goodness that beats nutrient paste any day," Shepard flirted and Samantha thought about it for a moment.  
"Well... what's the worst that could happen?"

"You could get the shits from the prison wine."  
"Which I have no intention of drinking."

"Just give me a couple of weeks to get the supplies and get the pruno done. I promise I'm more charming if you're wasted."  
"I'm sure you are," Samantha scoffed.


	3. Tender offerings

Shepard leaned her shoulder to the door frame, folded her arms over her abdomen and smirked when she saw Samantha had a towel folded over her forearm. During the past few weeks this had become the new routine, and Shepard didn't mind. She liked Samantha's company and she had water rations to share since she didn't bother showering more than a couple of times a week; being stinky and dirty made the sick pervert-guards less interested in getting close to her. Passive, non-violent resistance and all that; she would've preferred just beating the guards, but the last time she'd done that hadn't ended well for her, even if it had been very satisfying to break CO Harkin's right wrist and all of his fingers after he'd taken it upon himself to grab Shepard's breasts during a pat-down.

"I'm starting to think you're more interested in my shower than in me," Shepard teased.  
"How can you even say something like that!" Samantha snapped, her tone of voice the same one would use when severely offended. "Of course I am!" she then added and they both laughed.

"Well, at least you're honest about it," Shepard said and stepped aside, allowing Samantha entrance to the cabin.  
"Go ahead," she then encouraged and gestured toward the bathroom.

"Thanks!" Samantha said and headed in while Shepard retreated into her secret room and retrieved a few things, mostly various canned foods and of course, the prison wine (which she had not actually made in the toilet contrary to what she'd implied before). She brought them back to her cabin and set them on the table for later. She then grinned to herself and undressed before heading into the bathroom.

"Barge right in, why don't you!" Samantha called out from the shower after hearing the door open.  
"Don't mind if I do," Shepard said, pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped in.

"What the hell do you think you're doing!" Samantha frowned.  
"You told me to barge in," Shepard shrugged one shoulder.

"I was being sarcastic and you know it!"

"Maybe my listening comprehension isn't what it used to be," Shepard said, her voice low and smooth, her smile audible in it. Samantha found herself giving in with ease when Shepard put her hands over Samantha's hips and pulled her closer, pressing their bodies together.

"I hate to say it, but I have to admit there is something oddly irresistible about a woman with a major personality disorder," Samantha smirked.

"Don't forget, I'm also very dangerous and I have a bunch of scars, some women find all that very sexy," Shepard murmured, sliding her hands up along Samantha's back as she put hers around Shepard's midsection, pausing to inhale deeply at the pleasant feel of her warm body against her own.

Shepard felt strong and solid under Samantha's touch and against her body; decades of physical work having sculpted her, leaving her body as exquisite as a finely chiseled marble statue. She was focusing on that with such intensity it took her a while to realize something was off.

"Whoa, what the hell!" she exclaimed, pressed her palms against Shepard's shoulders and shoved her further away from herself as she took a step back until she hit the wall, the unpleasant realization of being trapped between the wall and Shepard rattling through her mind.

"Oh, yeah, that," Shepard chuckled, as if the fact that she had a seven-inch cock was something she casually kept forgetting about.  
"What... just... what!" Samantha snapped, unable to come up with a coherent sentence and Shepard made no attempt at hiding her mirth.

"All right, let's go over the frequently asked questions. No, I'm not transgender. Yes, I was born this way. Yes, I'm female apart from one little detail... well, not so 'little', heh-heh... And finally, don't worry, I'm a murderer, not a rapist, so you're perfectly safe," she smirked, folded her arms over her abdomen and leaned her shoulder against the wall.

"But... But... how?" Samantha frowned and gestured vaguely toward Shepard, kind of not wanting to stare but unable to keep her eyes from wandering lower to sneak glances at the hard cock.

She'd never found male genitalia exactly aesthetically pleasing, if anything, most she'd had the misfortune of seeing had looked rather repulsing. Shepard's didn't cause such a strong reaction, but Samantha couldn't really say she liked what she saw. The veins bulging underneath the skin and roping along the thick shaft looked somehow incredibly grotesque.

"Well, something got really messed up when I was just an embryo. I had a twin brother in the womb, but I consumed him. Unfortunately, not all of him got flawlessly integrated, so I ended up having parts of him manifest at odd places in my body. This being the most obvious part," Shepard explained as she shrugged one shoulder and nodded down to indicate her length.

"For some reason hearing that you've been killing since before you were even born doesn't surprise me," Samantha quipped, unable to keep from saying it out loud despite realizing it probably wasn't the best idea to insult Shepard while Samantha was still stuck between her and a hard place. Instead of getting offended, Shepard burst out laughing.

"I'd never thought of that before, but you're right," she chuckled, and Samantha let out a quiet breath of relief. Shepard stepped to the shower, tilted her head back and ran her hands repeatedly through her long dark red hair to get it thoroughly wet, and then reached for the packet of baking soda that was on the shelf in front of the mirror just outside the shower curtain.

Samantha realized Shepard had gifted her the last of the shampoo she'd smuggled in from somewhere, and she felt a bit guilty and also curious as to why Shepard had done that.

 _Maybe she fancies me too,_ Samantha mused, not denying she'd found herself feeling rather attracted to Shepard for a good while now, and that she'd hoped Shepard would take the hint and make a move or at least imply she was serious about her rather than just keep dicking around and flirting but not committing.

In the outside world something like another person giving you the last of their shampoo wasn't a big deal, but in here, it was a huge gesture. Then again, Shepard hadn't made a show of it like one might do if their intention was to impress someone with their act; she hadn't made a dramatic proclamation of how she would sacrifice her own comfort to spare Samantha from having to resort to washing her hair with baking soda.

"My mother kept me, but she wasn't exactly thrilled about having an abomination for a daughter," Shepard said as she let the baking soda set in her hair for a moment, focusing her attention to scrubbing her body.

"Spare the rod, spoil the child was her parenting method."  
"What about your father, where was he?" Samantha inquired.

"I don't know, never met him, all I know is that my mother hated him and because I was an unpleasant reminder of him, she took her hatred for him out on me," Shepard said and turned to face the shower, raising her arms and rinsing the baking soda from under them. When she turned, she also provided Samantha with a chance to see the scarring scattered over Shepard's back, buttocks and the backs of her thighs. Mementos of severe beatings she'd endured as a child, the act of violence innocently titled "spanking", like it was something harmless when in reality it had left Shepard unable to sit down for days, sometimes longer if the wounds got infected and weren't taken care of after the fact -which they never were.

"She was a violent drunk, so it's not like it surprises anyone that she beat me. Hell, my condition is probably her fault, for all I know she was drunk the entire time she was pregnant," Shepard scoffed and began to rinse her hair.  
"That sounds awful and terrifying."

"I was too busy being angry at her to be scared of her," Shepard said, and she meant it. She supposed it was just one of the many ways in which she wasn't normal. A normal kid would've been scared of the consequences of agitating the violent oppressor in their life, but Shepard hadn't been. No amount of beatings had discouraged her from doing the things which had triggered her mother's need to punish her. Shepard knew how incredibly stupid it had been, anyone with any sense of self-preservation would've learned how to behave.

"I was about seven years old when she lost it and came at me with a pair of scissors, threatening to cut my dick off," Shepard laughed, and Samantha found that to be a horrible thing to laugh about.  
"Clearly, she failed."

"Well, she almost made it, wanna see the scar?" Shepard asked with a grin and grabbed herself, turning to face Samantha.  
"No, thank you!" Samantha said immediately, turning her head away and raising her hands, making a small "stop"-gesture with them frantically.

"What happened to your mother?" she asked instead, still intently staring at the wall.

"I killed her that day. It was an accident, but I don't feel bad about it happening. Like I said, she was coming at me with a pair of scissors, I kicked her in the forearm and that ended up driving the scissors into her throat. The artery there got cut and she bled out in a couple of minutes," Shepard said, her tone nonchalant, as if she were merely discussing the weather or what she'd had for lunch today. Samantha couldn't think of anything to say to that, and Shepard didn't expect her to either.

"Afterward, I was on the streets, ran with gangs, mugged people, robbed stores, shit like that," Shepard said and stepped out from underneath the warm cascade of water when she was done showering. She graciously gestured toward the shower and bowed her head a little, silently offering the spot to Samantha who hadn't had a chance to finish getting properly cleaned up when Shepard had burst into the room.

"I was sixteen when I started having seizures and I went to a clinic to have myself checked out because I knew I wouldn't be able to enlist in the Alliance if I was sick. There was this doctor, Mordin Solus, and he explained my condition to me and ran some tests. Turned out, I had more of my brother's bits and pieces in me, namely in my brain."

"That sounds... creepy," Samantha muttered.  
"Doctor Solus extracted an eyeball, a tooth and a partially formed ear from my brain, all remnants of the brother I'd absorbed in the womb," Shepard explained. Samantha began to feel nauseated.

"The operation cured my seizures and I had his statement explaining my condition to the Alliance recruiters so that they'd have no reason to reject me. And the rest, as they say, is history," Shepard finished her story, grabbed a towel and exited the bathroom.

Samantha exhaled deeply. Shepard's story was a sad one but not at all uncommon, apart from Shepard's physical abnormalities. Samantha couldn't fathom how Shepard could be so nonchalant about her childhood and the things she'd endured.

 _I feel bad for her,_ Samantha sighed internally. She didn't know why she felt that way since Shepard had made it clear she didn't care about her past, didn't let it affect her. At least that was the facade she had put up, Samantha doubted Shepard was as indifferent about it as she liked to pretend.

 _I think I'm losing my mind, I'm falling for a callous murderer and I'm actually making excuses for her and feeling sorry for her, what is wrong with me,_ Samantha scolded herself.

Even if she were to look past what Shepard had done, she couldn't help but consider herself a fool for developing feelings for Shepard. She'd never get out of prison and visitation wasn't a common thing, Omega was built on an island in the middle of nowhere, visitations were arranged maybe twice a year, no one bothered running transportation between the mainland and the island for something like visiting hours. There was no profit to be made from that, most prisoners in Omega didn't have anyone who would even want to visit them, therefore the traffic wouldn't be profitable unless you overcharged the few willing visitors so heavily they would be inclined to just not go through with it.

All that summed up to the fact that once Samantha had served her time, the odds were she'd never see Shepard again. She certainly wouldn't get the chance to fulfill her dream of having a large house with a white picket fence, a dog, and a family; those were things she wouldn't get with Shepard, ever. So, what was the point of it all? To find some flimsy comfort during the time of her incarceration, and risk getting her heart crushed and scarred for life when she'd have to accept she'd never see Shepard again? It was idiotic, the dumbest thing anyone could do, certainly not something someone as smart as Samantha would ever do... but here she was, feeling a warm, gentle flutter in her chest when she thought of Shepard. It was insane.

Samantha sighed, turned the water off and grabbed her towel. When she joined Shepard a few minutes later, Shepard had already gotten dressed, she was wearing a black tank top and black boxer briefs. She had busied herself with setting the small table with whatever tableware she'd managed to smuggle in. She'd also brought a ziplock bag containing a pulpy liquid from her stash, and Samantha wasn't sure she wanted to know what it was.

"Are those cherries?" Samantha exclaimed softly after getting dressed when she noticed a small glass jar containing the red fruit.  
"Indeed, have one," Shepard encouraged, popped the lid open and picked a cherry from the jar before extending her arm toward Samantha.

"Mmmh, I can't even remember the last time I had something that actually had any flavor," Samantha moaned when the fruit burst between her teeth, the sugary juice it had marinated in seeping from it and flooding over her tongue, the sweetness of it all overtaking her senses to the point of her not realizing she was intently sucking on Shepard's fingertips. When she'd extended her arm toward Samantha, she'd assumed Samantha would take the cherry from between her fingers with her own rather than eat it straight from Shepard's hand.

Samantha blushed, and she was grateful Shepard didn't comment on her action, she rather gave Samantha a smug grin and left it at that. She gave Samantha the small jar of cherries and she accepted it somewhat awkwardly. Shepard then focused her attention on the bag of pruno. She had made it with juice, bread, mandarins and sugar, all ingredients she'd smuggled in from various jobs. Gathering up enough sugar had been the toughest part, she needed a lot of it and she could only take a handful of little sugar packets she discovered in the houses or break rooms if the job was at a factory or somewhere similar.

"How do you even make this stuff?"  
"You just mash it all together in a bag and let it rot for a few days, the toughest part is remembering to burp the bag," Shepard said.

"Burp the bag? How charming."  
"Yeah, because if you don't, it'll 'splode!" Shepard said and gestured widely with her arms to imitate the explosion.

"How do you know it's done?"  
"It's done when you don't need to burp it anymore, see? The bag is flat," Shepard said and opened the bag a little. The pungent odor assaulted Samantha's nose and she made a face.

"The guards are gonna smell that from a mile away," she said, and Shepard smiled.  
"Naw, Aria and is covering the night shift for my block, we're cool, I've made sure we won't be bothered."

"How are you in any position to bribe guards?" Samantha frowned.

"I don't bribe, I exchange favors for favors. Sometimes she needs me to handle an inmate who is threatening to compromise her little side business of drug dealing she'd prefer the authorities never heard about, in return she leaves me alone and lets me get away with a few little luxuries," Shepard explained with a smile. Samantha didn't want to know what exactly Shepard meant by "handling" an inmate, but she had a feeling that the rumors she'd heard about a prisoner who had recently been mysteriously bludgeoned to death had been Shepard's handiwork.

"Now... would you prefer your wine with pulp or without, m'lady?" Shepard asked as she grabbed a couple of plastic cups for them.  
"I... don't know? I mean, I think I'd prefer my drink without rotting fruit in it..."

"Excellent choice, madam. Hold this over the cup," Shepard said and handed Samantha a sock.  
"Oh, good Lord..." she groaned but did as she was told, and Shepard poured the wine through the sock. It didn't actually look bad, it was of yellow-ish shade, kind of reminded Samantha of a mango smoothie. Then the smell hit her again and she could barely contain a gag.

"Here's to five miserable months on the wagon, and all the irreparable harm it has caused me," Shepard smiled, hit her cup against Samantha's softly and took a long swallow, emptying the cup in one sitting.  
"Oh, God!" Samantha coughed after barely tasting a sip. It was horrible. Shepard laughed, but had to admit Samantha's reaction hadn't been as rough as she'd expected.

"Yeah, it's not for the tasting, you just gotta drink it," she said, poured herself another cup of the foul smelling and foul-tasting liquid.  
"It certainly isn't, it tastes like burning and rotten citrus fruit!"

"Sounds about right," Shepard nodded and downed another cup. Samantha took a few sharp breaths, pinched her nostrils shut with her fingers and braced herself before raising the cup to her lips and downed the drink, mentally ranting "just swallow, don't taste it" to herself.

"Nice!" Shepard complimented, genuinely impressed. "Do you find me charming yet, or do you need another drink?" she then grinned.  
"Well, since I got this far, might as well go all the way. Hit me," Samantha blew out a breath and Shepard poured her another drink from the bag. The drink didn't go down quite as easily as the previous one had; Samantha gagged twice but soldiered through it regardless.

"You're turning into a regular marine, Traynor," Shepard chuckled and refilled Samantha's cup once more.  
"You're a terrible influence on me."

"I think you had this in you the whole time, you just needed to have someone to blame it on, so you won't have to accept that you're capable of doing stuff like this by yourself," Shepard shrugged one shoulder.  
"That's strangely observant of you," Samantha narrowed her eyes at her and finished the fourth drink, the burning feeling of the alcohol pooling in the pit of her stomach making her feel a bit ill.

"I have personal experience about it. When I was in the Alliance, I used my missions as my excuse so that I didn't have to accept that I simply enjoyed killing," Shepard explained, and Samantha sighed a little at that.  
"What is so damn enjoyable about killing?" she scoffed.

"There is something precious about the whole situation... when you're with someone who knows they're going to die by your hand. Sometimes they know not to even bother trying, they don't beg. Most of the time they do. I respect those ones more. They are more annoying with the whining and crying but at least they try, even if they must know no amount of begging and reasoning would change anything," Shepard spoke softly. She paused for a moment to pour Samantha another shot. Samantha wasn't sure she should drink it but at the same time, she didn't think she wanted to hear this without thinking there was a chance she might not remember this if she got drunk enough, and then she wouldn't have to come to terms with the fact that she found Shepard irresistible despite the things she was saying right now.

"Then there are those who have no idea... there is something sweet and innocent about it... and you gotta see how it would make one feel like a God. I get to decide who lives and who dies, and the people I'm in charge of have no idea I'm the one who decides. It's a very intimate thing, in some ways it's been the only intimacy I've known in my life," Shepard said and leaned so close to Samantha their noses were touching, her hand resting against the side of Samantha's neck.

"You know, I could keep pushing until your windpipe gets crushed and you suffocate," Shepard said, tapping her thumb against Samantha's throat before letting it dig a bit deeper, not enough to genuinely hurt but making the implication clear. Samantha surprised Shepard by not flinching.

"You could. Clearly, you're the one in charge, you're the one who decides what happens to me, but the thing is... it doesn't bother me, I trust you with my life," Samantha whispered, and Shepard frowned.

She'd had no intention of actually hurting Samantha, she hadn't even intended to genuinely intimidate her, she'd just wanted to tease her, but now Shepard found herself being the one who was confused. Samantha's reaction hadn't been what she'd expected at all.

Samantha sunk her hands into Shepard's hair and pulled on her to close the gap between them, pressing her lips against Shepard's passionately. She then wrapped her legs around Shepard's waist and tightened her hold on her, pressing their bodies firmly together.

"Sam, I think you're drunk, we should stop," Shepard said after breaking the kiss.  
"Says the woman who kept insisting I should get drunk."

"Yeah, but I also told you before; I'm a murderer, not a rapist, and you're in no condition to consent," Shepard shook her head and sat up.  
"So, you have a code of ethics?" Samantha asked in disbelief, not sure she could take Shepard seriously. Judging from the clearly visible bulge in Shepard's boxer briefs, Samantha felt Shepard hadn't found the situation unpleasant at all.

"Of course I do. Otherwise I'd be just a lowlife thug," Shepard smiled.  
"You're not joking," Samantha said, feeling oddly offended when Shepard rejected her.

"I am not. You'd regret it in the morning and I don't want your regret on my conscience. If you still wanna do it when you're sober, we'll bang, okay? But until then, nothing will happen," Shepard said, her voice gentle and kind, everything about her in such contradiction with the fact that she was a cold-blooded killer Samantha didn't know what to make of her anymore.

"I just realized something about you," Samantha said, sat up and turned to look at Shepard who sat down next to her, her arms folded and resting in her lap, her forearms covering her erection as she waited for it to pass.  
"Do share."

"You're not a psychopath nor a sociopath, you're not a typical murderer."  
"What makes you think that?"

"Well, your code for one. And the fact that you kill out of necessity, you don't have a compulsion to murder. You kill when you have to but you don't actively go taking lives just for the sake of taking them."  
"I hadn't thought about it like that. So, what, you think that makes me redeemable?" Shepard smirked.

"I think so. At the very least it makes me feel better about falling in love with you because if I'm right, it means there's a chance you might feel something too," Samantha blurted out, not realizing what she'd said until she noticed the way Shepard was regarding her.

"Crap."  
"You love me?" Shepard quirked an eyebrow.

"Must you be so smug about it?" Samantha sighed. "I should go," she then said and began to awkwardly get up.  
"No, you shouldn't. Come on, I had to do a serious favor for Aria to convince her to look the other way while we hang out, it'd be a shame to waste it," Shepard smiled.

"Well... you're right," Samantha agreed and smiled back.  
"Good. Besides, we have to finish the pruno, you know, to get rid of the evidence," Shepard grinned and poured them more to drink.


	4. Release

Samantha couldn't help but feel a little guilty when she overheard people discuss an inmate who had been sent to the prison infirmary last night after "mysteriously" breaking all of her ribs. Samantha knew Shepard was responsible for the injuries, something she'd done as a favor for Aria to ensure the CO would allow Shepard and Samantha some alone time.

Granted, no one here was innocent, and if Aria had a reason to go ahead and send a message via Shepard to shut them up, Samantha supposed the inmate had had it coming. When it came to dealing with the COs, there was only one rule on Omega: don't fuck with Aria. If you were dumb enough to violate that rule, you'd brought the punishment on yourself... not that thinking about it like that made Samantha feel any better about it.

She entered Shepard's cabin like it were her own; nobody batted an eye, not the other inmates who saw her on the hallway, not the guards. It was more disturbing than it was flattering.

At some point she'd become Shepard's property, everyone was aware of it, knowing to keep their hands off. Or, alternatively, if someone ever decided to try revolting against Shepard's de facto rule, that would mean Samantha would probably be the first person they would go after to get Shepard's attention. Having a hypothetical target on her back wasn't something Samantha enjoyed either. But the thing she did find herself secretly enjoying was the idea of being Shepard's.

Intellectually, Samantha knew it was ridiculous, and it was beneath her; she was no one's property, she didn't belong to anyone, she was autonomous, independent, a person, an individual, not just some thing someone else could own. That said, Shepard made her feel like she belonged to her, belonged with her, and that in return felt good. Shepard was the missing piece Samantha had been needing without even realizing she'd been incomplete.

Shepard greeted Samantha with a long kiss that left her feeling dazed and vulnerable in a way she hadn't before with anyone else.

"So, what do you wanna do tonight?" Shepard asked casually, her comment made in jest, both of them knowing there wasn't much to do other than talk or fuck. Shepard had been respectful of Samantha's boundaries, not bringing up the pass Samantha had made on Shepard when drunk a few weeks ago, and for that, Samantha was grateful. She had wanted to go for it then, the idea of exploring Shepard's physique and sharing herself with Shepard in that way exciting and exhilarating, but Shepard had been right; Samantha would have regretted it in the morning.

"May I ask you something?"  
"Sure."

"Have you ever gotten anyone pregnant?" Samantha asked and Shepard snorted

"Oh, no, not that I know of," Shepard smirked and went on to explain what Doctor Solus had told her years ago. It wasn't that she was infertile, but the odds of her being able to impregnate someone were next to impossible.

"And this diagnosis was something I got over twenty years ago when I wasn't constantly eating poorly and being exposed to various chemicals, so I doubt the situation has gotten any better during the years," Shepard then chuckled.  
"All right," Samantha nodded.

"Why do you ask?"  
"I was just checking to figure out if we'd need to take precautions," Samantha murmured with a smile.

"Oh, I see," Shepard smiled back. She tilted her head back a little and exhaled deeply when Samantha pushed herself against Shepard, tightening her arm around Shepard's waist, grinding her hips into Shepard's.  
"There's one more thing I need to know."

"I think I know what you mean. It's a few weeks old, but the situation hasn't changed," Shepard said and went to the desk by the bed, took a folded piece of paper from on top of it and handed it to Samantha. It was a medical record, signed by doctor Karin Chakwas from the infirmary, stating that Shepard was the picture of health. Samantha noted that since it was a few weeks old, it indicated Shepard had originally planned to go all the way with her the night they'd gotten drunk but she had held back for Samantha's sake. Something about that made her think higher of Shepard's character.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think to get one," Samantha then realized and Shepard smiled.

"I guess I'll just take your word for it. Besides, it's not like I have an active sex life to look forward to once you get out anyway, so it doesn't really matter," she shrugged one shoulder and Samantha sighed a little internally. She'd never thought she'd feel this way but the thought of getting out was becoming an unpleasant one.

"Well... now that we've gotten that out of the way..." Samantha trailed off and went to Shepard, reaching to kiss her again.

"Wait, wait, wait," Shepard mumbled into the kiss, "I think for both our sakes I should take a shower first," Shepard said and hurried into the bathroom, making quick work of getting cleaned. Samantha decided to return the favor from the time when Shepard had barged in on her while showering.

She went to Shepard and wrapped her arms around her from behind. Shepard glanced at her over her shoulder but didn't comment when Samantha pressed their bodies together, leaning to kiss the spot between Shepard's shoulder blades, nibbling her way up to the back of Shepard's neck before trailing her lips over to her deltoid.

"Sam..." she breathed when she felt Samantha's hand enclose around her cock and grip it firmly. Samantha handled the member in her hand, curious about how it felt, how it reacted. The skin was softer than she'd expected, the veins slowly coming easier to feel as Shepard started getting hard.

"Let me know how I'm doing, I've never actually done this before with someone who had this particular body part," Samantha said.

"You're doing fine," Shepard assured, her voice barely more than a low breath. In truth, it had been a long time since she'd had someone else touch her like this. Samantha frowned a little, concerned she'd hurt Shepard when the redhead suddenly gripped her wrist and tugged on her hand until she released her hold.

"Did I...?"  
"No, no, that felt really good, but... if you keep doing it, I'm gonna come."

"Maybe I want you to," Samantha said, slowly slid her hand back to where it had been and gave Shepard's cock a firm squeeze.

"Is that so?" Shepard smiled and let out a long slow exhale, closing her eyes and tilting her head back a little, giving herself a permission to fully enjoy the touch, no longer feeling the need to prolong the release now that Samantha had made her intention clear.

"I've heard that if you get a guy to come once before actually sleeping with him, he'll last longer in bed. I'm assuming it would apply to you too... annnd I'm assuming the stories I've heard regarding this have been true. Because if not, then I don't know," Samantha trailed off somewhat awkwardly.

The only reason she was familiar with the subject at all was because once upon a time, during what she nowadays referred to as her past life, she'd had the misfortune of having to listen to her straight colleagues go into explicit details about their sex lives. She'd never imagined she'd do something with that information.

Shepard chuckled a little and turned to look at Samantha over her shoulder, grinning a little.

"I should warn you princess- the first time tends to get a little messy."

* * *

"Looks like it'll be a while yet," Samantha said when she entered Shepard's cabin. It was her last day as inmate in Omega, the helicopter to deliver her to the mainland was en route.  
"So you thought you'd sneak in one last shower?" Shepard chuckled quietly.

"If there's any hot water left," Samantha quipped and went to take a seat next to Shepard. She felt anxious and sad, not at all excited about going back home because she knew she'd miss Shepard terribly.  
"You remember how scared I was when I first met you?" she asked and put her hand over Shepard's. She just nodded a little and interlaced her fingers with Samantha's, rubbing a firm but gentle circle into Samantha's palm with her thumb.

"I was terrified... of the COs, of the other inmates..."  
"Of me," Shepard interjected with a smirk.

"Of you," Samantha confirmed, "but you helped me. And I never would've expected that from you, not after the things I'd heard of you in the news or in the official Alliance records. I thought you'd be..." she trailed off, unable to think of the right word.  
"That I'd be a monster."

"Well... basically, yes," Samantha admitted. "You were nothing like I'd expected. There's a heart underneath that armor of callousness, and I'm glad I got to know that about you, and that I got to love you."  
"There wasn't a heart there for the longest time, you are the one who brought it back to daylight. Until you touched me, I didn't really know I could still feel. You're the one who helped me, and I lo-"

"Don't. If you say it, I will burst into tears in front of Aria later, and that would be mortifying," Samantha interrupted and Shepard scoffed quietly with a rueful smile.  
"Thanks for everything. Even if we don't end up with the house with the white picket fence and the two kids... Sorry, stupid joke."

"That sounds pretty good to me," Shepard said softly and turned to face Samantha, taking both her hands into her own. They remained still in silence like that for a few minutes until the door to Shepard's cabin was pulled open.

"Come on. Unless you wanna stay here that badly," Aria said impatiently as she waited to escort Samantha to the helicopter that was waiting on the rooftop to take her to the mainland.

Shepard pulled Samantha into an embrace and held her a while longer, knowing she was testing Aria's patience, but she didn't care, she'd deal with the consequences later if there'd be any.

"I love you," Shepard whispered into Samantha's ear before letting go of her and she reluctantly stood up and exited the cabin with Aria.

She didn't look back.


	5. Skin

Shepard had never been the type who would pine over a woman, but she still found herself thinking about Samantha almost daily. It had been over three years now since they'd said their goodbyes and Shepard couldn't understand why her heart still refused to let go.

"Hey! Quit your fucking daydreaming, I'm sick of working alone here," Shepard's new partner said. She was the only person Shepard had met who had genuinely not given two shits about who Shepard was or what she'd done, at least not in the way people usually did. She wasn't intimidated because she was scared, she was intimidated because she saw Shepard as the rival for the title of the baddest bitch in Omega.

"I'm getting to it, Jack," Shepard mumbled as she began gathering the files she and her partner were supposed to clear out from the infirmary. Doctor Chakwas had specifically requested that Shepard be here for this job, and she couldn't figure out why.

"Might wanna hurry on that. Know the damage I can do in a confined space like this?" Jack threatened but Shepard wasn't fazed, she was used to Jack's bravado.  
"How about you go find some rubbing alcohol to drink while I look at these papers," Shepard suggested with a smirk.

"Yes, ma'am, commander, ma'am!" Jack saluted sarcastically.

The scene was messy, someone had died there earlier and that meant there were a lot of unpleasant bodily fluids to clean up. Jack busied herself by peeking into the cabinets looking for alcohol and drugs while Aria wasn't paying attention to keeping an eye on them. Shepard didn't bother, she knew better already, but Jack hadn't been here before, at least not as a cleaner.

Shepard rather focused on trying to figure out why Chakwas would request her here. She'd always been one of the few people on this entire damn island who had genuinely looked after Shepard from day one. She'd never understood why Chakwas had chosen to work here, someone with her bedside manner and skills could've gotten a job anywhere else. Perhaps she'd already been everywhere, seen everything else and had decided to dedicate her time on improving the conditions in places where no one else would volunteer to do it.

In other words, she wasn't the kind of a person who would request to assign a literal shit-job to anyone unless she had a reason to. Shepard deduced Chakwas had wanted to tell her something but hadn't had a chance to do it directly and privately, and probably wouldn't since the guards were always there.

 _She said the old medical records should be removed and taken to the shredder,_ Shepard mused and looked through the folders piled on the edge of the desk. Jack joined her and grabbed a folder, opened it and began to read through a former inmate's medical record.

"Okay, this bitch came in complaining about a 'bad smell originating from her anus'. I don't even know where to start listing what's wrong with this," Jack guffawed. Shepard ignored her and flipped through the labels on the edges of the folders until she found a familiar name.

 _Traynor, S._  
 _ID 31100-672_  
 _Symptoms: Headaches, nausea, fatigue._  
 _Performed a pregnancy test to rule out the obvious cause. Tested positive. Father unknown, patient refuses to disclose the identity. No need for further investigation at this point, patient says it was consensual._

"...but this was over three years ago," Shepard mumbled to herself. Jack glanced at her but didn't comment, she was too busy reading the gory details in an autopsy report.

Shepard looked at the date again, assuming Samantha hadn't had a chance to say anything about it if this was from the last checkup performed before the inmate was escorted out, but that wasn't the case. Samantha had known for over three weeks before being released.

 _Why didn't she..._ Shepard thought and then scoffed at herself. Why the hell would she have said anything, what would've been the point of it? Shepard wasn't going anywhere, ever. It wasn't like she could've been involved in the child's life even if she had known.

 _Besides, how do you know it's even yours, Jane? For all you know, she was fucking a CO on the side. You can't get a woman pregnant, it's statistically impossible,_ Shepard scolded herself, but even as she was thinking that, she knew she was wrong.

Samantha wouldn't have needed to fuck a guard for favors and none of them would've had the nerve to force her either, Shepard had made sure Aria would look after Samantha whenever Shepard wasn't able to, and while Aria wasn't the most honorable person on the planet, she had always kept her word to Shepard, as she had kept hers to Aria. It wasn't a friendship, it was a mutually beneficial partnership, both parties respecting each other's specific skills and needs, and compensating for each other wherever necessary. So, no, there was no way Samantha could've gotten pregnant by someone else.

"Not a word," Shepard said to Jack who regarded her curiously as she emptied the folder and tucked the papers into her shirt.  
"Fine, but I get this," Jack said and held up an anatomy-chart.

"You want _that_?" Shepard scoffed.  
"It's better wank-material than _Homeward bound_ ," Jack shrugged and Shepard let out a whistle.

"You are one sick puppy, Jack."  
"Says the mass murdering mutant," Jack retorted. "Now hurry up, it's your turn to empty the shit-bucket."

* * *

Kai Leng was Shepard's favorite person to hate. He was overconfident, a trash talker, and much to his annoyance, he had nothing to back up his grandiose claims with. He was the kind of a guy who had to figuratively pick on people smaller than him to feel big. He was the kind of a guy who walked around pretending to be something he wasn't, a beta desperately trying to convince everyone that he was an alpha when everyone around him knew that a real alpha wouldn't need to proclaim his status. It made him the pathetic laughing stock. It also made him dangerous because when a guy with a fragile ego needs to feel like a big man, people get killed.

She'd wanted to kill him for years, but she hadn't. She couldn't say what had stopped her from doing it, there had been opportunities, there'd been times when Shepard felt that Aria had been practically setting it up when she'd left Shepard alone with Leng, expecting she'd kill him. But she hadn't, and now she was glad she hadn't.

 _Everything has a reason_ , she mused when she realized Kai Leng was her key to getting out of here, a man most deserving of his role.

Shepard hadn't even thought about the scalpel she'd stolen from the crime scene she'd been cleaning with Samantha years ago. She could've sold it to another inmate or used it herself but she hadn't, she'd left it be and now was glad she had. She was finally coming up with a use for it.

Shepard stood by the door to her cabin as Aria ran her hands along Shepard's sides, under her arms, along her legs, checking her as thoroughly as she could be bothered to. When she moved to stand in front of Shepard to go over her once more from this side, Shepard quietly cleared her throat to get her attention. Aria continued working but glanced at her to imply she was listening, so to speak.

Shepard glared at Kai Leng, who was idly standing by, fidgeting with his keys. Aria quirked an eyebrow and Shepard tilted her head back to indicate her cabin. Aria shrugged one shoulder as if to say "whatever" and the silent conversation was over.

"You know what, Leng? I think it's about time we did a random search of Shepard's cabin. Would you do the honors?" she then smirked.  
"It would be my pleasure," Leng grinned and entered the cabin, expecting Aria to stand by outside with Shepard. He was about to gleefully begin trashing the place when he heard Aria speak again.

"You have until tomorrow morning to do whatever it is you're doing, the new kid Jenkins will be here at eight to let you out," she said and locked Shepard in with Leng... or more accurately, locked him in with her.

"Aria, what the hell!" Leng called out after her, fumbling to get his gun, but Shepard had already closed the distance between them and before he even had a chance to pull his weapon on her, Shepard delivered a hard left hook into his midsection, punching his liver with such force he immediately dropped to his knees. She kicked him in the throat and he fell onto his back on the floor, gasping for air and complaining loudly in the excruciating pain the shock to his liver caused.

Shepard took his handcuffs and cuffed him to the bed's steel leg which was bolted to the floor. He let out strangled noises, finally turning to just straight up scream at her. He was in pain and frustrated, refusing to believe this was happening to him. Shepard had seen this reaction many times before. He knew he was going to die but instead of pleading, he got angry.

Shepard let him continue struggling and went to retrieve the scalpel. When he saw it in her hand, he got louder.

"Why are you screaming when I haven't even cut you yet?" Shepard snapped but he kept kicking and screaming, literally.

He drew his legs back and kicked hard, the soles of his boots impacting with Shepard's midsection, sending her across the room until she slammed against the wall. The scalpel clattered on the floor and Leng tried to see where it went.

"Bitch!" Shepard coughed when she was finally able to breathe again. "I'll split you in two!" she grunted and stood up, inhaling heavily. He refused to stop kicking and instead of uselessly threatening him or trying to reason with him, Shepard went to grab the heavy metallic boxes piled up next to the secret door. Without warning, she raised one as high as she could and then threw it down, the box not heavy enough to crush Leng's legs completely, but it caused enough damage to make him stop kicking, at least for a while.

"Does that hurt? Aw, poor you," Shepard then said, knelt down and pushed on Leng until he was on his stomach on the floor. She straddled his legs, reached for the nightstick in his utility belt and yanked his trousers halfway down his thighs.

"Remember how we first met? I know it was a long time ago, but I remember, do you?" she asked, leaning over him to be able to speak into his ear. His screams had slowly begun to dissipate into desperate sobs.

"You didn't know everything about me and thought you could have your way with me, but then it turned out my dick is bigger than yours, literally. So, you hit me in the back with so hard that I was momentarily paralyzed, and then you sodomized me with a nightstick. I was bleeding internally for three days. Remember that, CO Leng?" Shepard said through clenched teeth, grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back.

"I remember," he cried.  
"Good. Then you have an idea of what is coming next," Shepard smiled sweetly and tapped Leng's cheek with the tip of the nightstick.

"Please..."  
"You brought this on yourself, a thousandfold," Shepard scolded, realizing but ignoring the fact that she was repeating her mother's words, the situation close to identical too. "Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell."

"Don't..." he pleaded and she slammed the nightstick against his buttocks, sideways, leaving behind an angry red mark which would rise to severe bruise eventually. She hit him again, this time on the backs of his thighs, then on the backs of his knees, down on his ankles. She climbed back up the same path, hitting him as hard as she could before she finally stood over him, grabbed the back of his utility belt and yanked on it, rising his hips off the floor.

"Stay still!" she ordered and he blubbered desperate apologies as he pleaded her not to go through with whatever it was that she was planning. Shepard rolled her eyes, she was getting annoyed with his crying.

"You do realize the more you whine, the harder I'll make this for you?" she asked, quoting her mother once again. He nodded, trying to calm himself down and stop, but he couldn't. Shepard got a new idea and disappeared into the hidden room for a moment.

"What are you going to do?" he asked over his shoulder when Shepard emptied a long but somewhat narrow glass jar from white asparagus.  
"I'm gonna have fun, that's what," Shepard said and went to him. The amount of resistance she met when she began to insert the jar into his ass took her by surprise and she had to strain to get it in.

"Well, aren't you a tight little bitch," she smirked, stood up and gave the jar a light kick. He was howling in pain until he couldn't even make another sound.

"The jar was cracked so try not to clench, or the-" Shepard began to say but it was too late; the glass shattered.  
"No, no! Somebody! Help me!"

"I'll help you," Shepard said and straddled his ass, her weight on him making it all worse, the shards of glass cutting deeper into him. She pushed his shirt up to expose his lower back.

"I was recently assigned to clean up the infirmary, and you know I like to educate myself, and the doc was about to throw the book away anyway, so I took it. The book was titled something along the lines of 'Spine injuries for dummies', and you know, I learned a thing or two from it..." Shepard trailed off.

She ran the blade along Leng's spine and she could feel him tense up when the cool steel touched his skin. He knew better than to agitate her further by struggling. Little did he know it wouldn't make a difference, her mind was already made up.

"I'm no doctor, but if I understood correctly, injuries to the spine around here should take away the feeling below your hips," she then said and tapped the blade against his lower back.  
"Shepard... whatever you're thinking about doing... please, don't do it."

"Shh, darling... trust me," Shepard grinned, raised her arm and then drove it down, drilling the scalpel into Leng's spine. He screamed.

"Almost done," Shepard said calmly and stabbed him again, this time a little lower, trailing further down with the blade, twisting it to make sure the spinal cord got severed. She then waited for him to stop crying and screaming before turning him so that he was once more on his back on the floor. She took the scalpel and went to straddle his chest.

"What are you going to do?" Leng asked hoarsely.  
"Well... I'm kind of infamous, I need a new look," Shepard smiled sweetly and put her left hand over Leng's forehead. "Hold still."

* * *

CO Richard L. Jenkins unlocked the door to Shepard's cabin, feeling excited about his new job, happy to prove he wasn't scared of anyone, not even Shepard. When he got the door open and saw what was inside the cabin, he nearly pissed himself.

"Oh, God!" he gasped. He grabbed his radio and fumbled with it, unable to keep his hands from shaking.

"Command, I have an officer down! The prisoner's missing and the officer's gun is gone! Repeat, Shepard is missing and armed!" he said and went to the body then, kneeling by it. The nametag on his shirt identified him as Kai Leng, but his face was just a bloody mess, covered in deep lacerations and blood.

"Oh, God... officer Leng?" Jenkins then gasped when he realized his chest was still rising and falling, his breathing labored, but steady.  
"I need a medevac, officer Leng is still alive!" Jenkins radioed.

"Oh, for fuck's sakes," Commander Bailey sighed when he arrived at the scene with his team and saw the body. "All right, stay with him, son. You two, help him move Leng and get him to the helipad for the chopper, the rest of you, find Shepard!" he barked and the officers did as they were told.

Once Leng had been moved out of the room and rushed to the helipad, Bailey noticed the strange markings on the wall and went to investigate closer. He pushed heavy boxes aside and realized there was a secret door. He called in his team and entered the cabin neighboring Shepard's. It was dark, there was no electricity being run up there since no one was supposed to be living there.

"All right... everybody, be sharp. Shepard's an ex-marine, an N7, which is basically a fancy title for a government sanctioned assassin, so don't think you can take her on," Bailey muttered as they looked around the space. They proceeded to investigate the area cautiously and Bailey went to open the bathroom door.

"Jesus Christ," he gasped when he saw a naked body slumped in the corner.

"What the hell happened here, who the hell are you?" Bailey frowned at the dead body as he knelt by it and looked closer. The body was missing a face and at first, Bailey was about to just consider that it was Shepard, that something had gone very wrong during the fight between Shepard and Leng; looking at the nether regions alone it could've been her, but Bailey realized something was missing. If this were Shepard's body, she should've had breasts.

"Call back the medevac!" Bailey shouted.  
"Why?" Jenkins frowned.

"Because this is Kai Leng! Shepard is on the chopper, she's wearing his face!"

* * *

"This is medical unit number twenty-six, we're inbound with a forty-year old male with severe facial lacerations, weapon unknown. Vital signs are good..." a young medic spoke over the radio as the pilot waited for the all clear to be able to take off. Shepard sat up on the stretcher and turned to him. He dropped the radio and backed into the wall, startled, then terrified when she peeled off Leng's face from over her own.

"Get out," she said and he nodded sheepishly, opened the helicopter's door and jumped down onto the helipad.

"You too!" Shepard then ordered the pilot and kicked him in the side to shove him out of the seat before taking his place and pulling the door shut.

"Ah, there we go," Shepard mumbled and began the ascend. It had been a while since she'd last piloted a helicopter but the majority of the tech and the machinery seemed to have remained the same or similar to what they'd been back in her day. She knew she wouldn't get many miles out of the chopper before the authorities would catch up, but she didn't need to, she just needed to get close to the mainland. She could then parachute out, ditch the helicopter and let it crash, give the authorities a little something to keep them busy until they could confirm she hadn't been in the chopper when it crashed.

 _Hold on, sweetheart, I'm on my way._


	6. Old friends

"Shepard Commander!" Legion exclaimed happily when he answered the door to the loft.

Some things didn't change, not even after two decades. He and Tali were still living in the same loft apartment in a building that looked like it should've been torn down twenty years ago. Tali had explained the rent was cheap and that this specific spot was perfect to hijacking a highspeed internet access. Shepard assumed that still applied. As did the fact that Legion was a strange one. Shepard had never figured out why he called her "Shepard Commander" while everyone else would've reversed the order of the title and the name. But over the years she'd worked with the kid (who was by now a grown man), she'd grown to consider a term of endearment almost.

"I figured I'd find you two nerds here, still sitting by your almighty Internet," Shepard smiled.  
"It has gotten even faster since your last visit," Legion said happily.

"Shepard, I heard you'd gotten out, but I didn't... I wasn't sure..." Tali trailed off awkwardly after coming to see who was at the door.  
"Well, here I am," Shepard shrugged with a grin.

Of course, her escape had made headline news, and she'd expected nothing less. Which was why she'd needed to look up her old friends, the people who had supported her throughout the whole ordeal, the people who still worked behind the scenes to try and get Shepard's conviction overturned. People who had once been colleagues, "civilian consultants", but had become Shepard's most trusted friends. Those in favor of Shepard's incarceration had begun to refer to the phenomena as "The Cult of Shepard" and had deemed people's obsession with Shepard insane and unhealthy.

She wasn't a spiritual leader, but she was charismatic and charming, the kind of a person people would happily follow to hell if need be. Countless of people had, back when she'd worked for the Alliance, she'd sent dozens of marines to their deaths, she'd gone to her own death more than once. It had never been a decision she'd made easily, but she'd always chosen the mission over a single marine's life. The biggest bullshit of the whole ordeal with the Alliance was that they had praised Shepard for this up until they'd gotten caught sanctioning such activities.

Tali threw her arms around Shepard's shoulders and hugged her tightly. She'd been one of the loudest activists trying to get Shepard released, and while Shepard hadn't been able to keep up with how she'd been doing recently, she knew Tali had never stopped.

"I missed you," she said.  
"I missed you too, Tali," Shepard whispered and hugged her back.

"If you could just walk out of there like that, why didn't you do it sooner, you jerk?" Tali then scoffed and punched Shepard's shoulder.  
"I didn't want it badly enough before, I would've failed. Besides, say I had escaped, then what?"

"What changed?" Legion asked.  
"I'll explain later... but for now... I need you guys to help me find some people, starting with Saren Arterius."

"Of course, Commander," Legion agreed without even asking to hear why Shepard wanted to find Saren. That was what she'd always liked about him; he knew to do as he was told and not waste time questioning her.  
"Is it okay if I take a shower and then take a little nap? I'm exhausted."

"Sure," Tali agreed. "I'll go get you something clean to wear after," she then said and began heading out of the room.  
"Thank you."

Shepard undressed and went to the shower, taking the time to truly enjoy it for the first time in forever. The last time she'd found pleasure in showering had been when Samantha had shared hers with her, but the pleasure then had been derived from something completely different than just enjoying a cascade of hot water over her skin.

Right now, she enjoyed being able to wash her hair with a handful of shampoo, lathering away so excitedly there was foam everywhere. She enjoyed the coffee and vanilla scented conditioner, the honey facial scrub, the soap with a scent she couldn't place but guessed was some kind of an herb. And after a long, thorough cleanse, she got to wrap herself in a big towel that didn't have that sour smell Omega's towels had because they weren't properly washed. Shepard hadn't felt this clean in twenty years. It was refreshing in all kinds of different ways.

She finally exited the bathroom and went to the living room to ask about where she could get some shut eye.

"We were having trouble locating Saren, so we called in some help," Tali smiled over her shoulder when she noticed Shepard enter the room.  
"Liara," Shepard breathed when she saw her.

Nowadays, doctor Liara T'Soni was mostly known for her tireless campaigning to get Shepard released from prison rather than her work as as scientist. She'd written several books detailing the events from another point of view, bringing up Shepard as a person, not as a marine, tried getting people to see who Shepard really was.

There'd been some success and the books had sold well, but probably for all the wrong reasons; people didn't genuinely care about who Shepard was as a human being, they just wanted to get a peek at the country's most infamous murderer's history from a previously unknown angle. The fact that everyone knew Shepard and Liara had been lovers didn't help make her come across as unbiased either which meant people weren't likely to take her seriously or want to pay attention to her efforts of correcting their views regarding Shepard.

Liara also happened to be in charge of the country's vastest intelligence network, so if someone needed to be found, Liara was the person who would know where to look, and if she didn't, she'd find someone else who did.

Liara went to Shepard and jumped into her arms, her hands in Shepard's hair, her legs around Shepard's waist as she kissed her so hard she nearly yanked Shepard's head off and bruised her lips, but she liked it that way. Without missing a beat, Shepard turned around and carried Liara onto the couch in the back of the dimly lit room.

"Uh, we're... just... gonna..." Tali stuttered awkwardly and began to back out of the room when Liara impatiently pushed her trousers down to her ankles and kicked them off her legs completely, and then tore off the towel from around Shepard as the redhead greedily grabbed and squeezed Liara's breasts while hungrily kissing her. Liara put her legs around Shepard's waist and moaned loudly into the kiss when Shepard slid into her eagerly.

"But I wanna watch," Legion complained. "Ow!" he then yelped when Tali grabbed him by his ear and dragged him out of the room, closing the door behind them but realizing that unfortunately, it did nothing to muffle out the loud moans of pleasure from Liara and the almost animalistic grunts from Shepard.

* * *

"Why do you want to find Saren?" Liara asked. They were still on the couch, Shepard on top of her and still between her legs, resting her head on Liara's chest. She'd refused to let Shepard move even after she'd come, and Shepard didn't mind, except for the getting sticky with their combined bodily fluids-part. Then again, at least she'd have an excuse to have another luxurious shower.

"I just want to talk to him," Shepard smirked. Liara ran her fingers through Shepard's hair and clenched her inner muscles around Shepard, eliciting a soft groan from her, the movement causing Shepard's by now flaccid cock to slip out completely.  
"Don't lie to me or I won't help you."

"I want to try and see if I can convince him to issue a statement saying something along the lines of Alliance taking responsibility for the whole mess instead of blaming it all on me."  
"Why would he do that?"

"Well, because I intend to be pointing a gun at him when I ask nicely," Shepard said and cupped one of Liara's breasts with her hand and reached to enclose her mouth around the nipple, sucking on it and flicking the tip of her tongue over it. Liara exhaled deeply, gripping Shepard's hair tighter as she held her close.

"I don't think that's gonna work, everyone is gonna suspect coercion. Besides, now you're a fugitive, you killed a CO, it's not like you'd just get to walk free even if Saren did confess to being responsible for the missions he sent you on."  
"I'm not looking to get freed, I just want him to publicly take responsibility... and then I want to kill him for selling me out."

"You want revenge."  
"I want a lot of things," Shepard muttered against Liara's breast and nudged herself higher, beginning to slowly get hard again.

"I can imagine you have a long list of things you've been wanting to do," Liara said, offering a lopsided smile. Shepard kissed her and reached between their bodies to guide herself in but was interrupted before she fully made it, the tip of her cock barely inside Liara.

"If you're done... we've found Saren's location," Tali called out awkwardly from the other room through the door.  
"Give us twenty minutes..." Shepard replied and Liara quirked an eyebrow, squeezing her inner muscles around Shepard once more, coaxing the cock half inside her to grow harder. Shepard closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, a smile on her lips.

"Make it an hour," she then corrected and leaned to kiss Liara.


	7. The vengeful one

It didn't matter to Shepard that she was on every wanted list in the country, possibly a few abroad as well. It didn't spark a bout of paranoia because she'd learned a long time ago that the best hiding place was in plain sight. She did tense up a little whenever she needed to ID herself and the person looking at it repeatedly glanced back and forth between her and ID Legion had forged. But no one had recognized her.

Frankly, Shepard didn't recognize herself and had startled herself more than once when walking past a mirror. She was expecting to see green eyes and long dark red hair. She was seeing blue eyes and a platinum blonde pixie cut. Kevin had given her the haircut and the dyejob and decided to top the transformation off with a pair of blue contact lenses.

Kevin was Legion's real name, and referring to him with several different names had begun as a joke, one he'd initiated, pretending each of his moods was actually a different personality. Kevin was the easy-going hair and make up artist (which was his real job, namely, disguising government agents with Tali to prevent them from being assassinated or alternatively, to keep their own assassins from being recognized). Then there was Moody-Maurice, a name he used to explain to those around him that he needed to be left alone. Moody-Maurice was usually followed up by Manic-Manny. In other words, he was bi-polar and had chosen to try and find some humor in it whenever he could. Not everyone agreed or found anything funny about it, but he didn't care.

Finally, he'd just begun calling himself Legion after he'd explained his approach to his moods to an online friend who went by the name of Edi and she'd quoted a passage from the gospel of Mark depicting Jesus restoring a demon-possessed man.

 _"My name is Legion, for we are many."_

As much as Shepard appreciated Kevin's work, Shepard felt like she owed more to Tali for engineering her various looks. She'd even crafted her partial masks and other items which would provide subtle but crucial changes to one's appearance.

She had sent Shepard off with a backpack full of supplies to use and detailed instructions on how to change her appearance. Fake nose, fake chin, fake cheekbones, fake teeth which would change the shape of Shepard's profile by basically giving her a duckface without her having to look like she was doing it. Her face had become a puzzle with interchangeable pieces which affected the big picture but each version worked.

Shepard had been trained by the same people who had trained Tali when it came to covert operations, she knew how to change her appearance in less than a minute and disappear into the crowd. It took surprisingly little effort if you knew what you were doing.

Shepard walked toward the apartment building and took off her beanie and the glasses, tucked them into her backpack and pulled out a gray sweater. She put it on and buttoned it over her T-shirt, ran her hand through her hair and flung the backpack over her shoulder, looking rather different as she entered the building than when she'd been approaching it. Subtle changes, and no one would've been able to pick her out of a crowd even if they'd recognized her at some point.

She smiled and muttered a polite hello to the people who she met in the stairwell, none of them even pausing to look at her. Best way to infiltrate places like this was to act like you belonged there, and that was something Shepard was good at. She entered the hallway and dug out another piece of clothing Tali had given her; a colorful vest you saw on every janitor, on every city worker, on every gardener; the vest that gave the person wearing it permission to be anywhere because clearly, they were there to fix something, no one questioned it, ever.

"What is it?" Saren asked through the door when Shepard knocked.  
"Hello, I'm here to check your heating unit, they're being recalled and I need to check to make sure you don't have one of the malfunctioning models. They're a fire hazard."

"Fine," he sighed agitatedly and opened the door. "It's over there, just hurry up," he then said, turning to face away from Shepard and pointed at the room on the left.

"Don't worry, I'll be done soon enough," Shepard said and before Saren knew what hit him, she had him in a chokehold from behind. When he realized what was happening, he grabbed her elbow and ducked, stepping to the side and slipping from the hold. He twisted Shepard's arm behind her back, kicked her in the back of the knee to drop her and when she was down, he threw a punch to the side of her face.

"Oh-ho-ho, you picked the wrong man to mess with," he chuckled, still under the impression that this was just some random thug trying to get some money off him and run.

"Oh, no, you're definitely the man I was looking for," Shepard smiled and wiped blood from the corner of her mouth with the back of her hand. Saren frowned and stared at her, he was slowly beginning to recognize her but she couldn't quite place her, he knew her but didn't know where from.

"Shepard," he finally gasped and while he was still trying to comprehend that it was really her, she kicked his legs right from underneath him and hurried to grab him into the chokehold again, this time keeping him down on the floor, squeezing against the veins in his neck until he passed out.

* * *

"What are you going to do?" Saren grumbled when he came to and remembered where he was, only he'd been moved from the floor to sit in a chair, his ankles tied to the chair's legs with zip ties, but his arms still free. The chair didn't have arm rests, and Shepard didn't think he'd manage to do much damage in his current state. The television was on, an old action movie playing, the sounds of gunfire and cheesy one-liners echoing in the apartment loudly, drowning out other sounds, and Saren didn't bother screaming for help, he knew better.

"You know, I haven't decided yet," Shepard said and stepped in front of Saren. She racked the slide of the Beretta she'd stolen from Leng during her escape, and aimed the handgun between Saren's eyes.  
"I could just shoot you," she said and squeezed the trigger. The pistol clicked loudly and Saren jumped at the sound.

"Oh, dear, I seem to have forgotten how to handle a gun, it wasn't loaded," Shepard chuckled and smacked the magazine into place before racking the slide again. She could see his throat bob as he swallowed hard.

"I'm not going to kill you. You're going to kill yourself after leaving behind a note in which you express your deepest regrets about ruining my life by not taking responsibility for the orders _you_ gave," Shepard said.  
"And why the fuck would I do any of that?" Saren scoffed and Shepard smiled.

"How much have your heard about what happened to CO Kai Leng during my grand escape?" she inquired and he shook his head; he hadn't heard anything aside from being informed that a guard had been killed.

Shepard began detailing the extent of the torture she'd put him through, exaggerating a little by adding things she would've wanted to do to Leng if she'd had the time and if the bastard hadn't died on her so soon. She took out a knife and pressed it on Saren's skin but didn't move, didn't cut just yet, merely used it as an incentive for him to write the note. When he refused, she began cutting, not to kill, but to extract a thin layer of skin from the side of his neck. She shoved it into his mouth and pressed her palm over his lips, forcing him to taste the blood and sweat on his own skin. When she finally moved her hand, he spat the skin out and retched loudly.

"Fine, I'll write the fucking note, but you realize no one is going to believe I committed suicide, you just left a mark on the body," he said gleefully.  
"You could be right. This hasn't been tested out properly yet, but if it works, then... well, then I get what I wanted," Shepard said and dug out a small aluminum jar from her backpack. For a while Saren thought it was lip balm.

"It pays to have friends who work in places that specialize in coming up with all kinds of interesting prototypes. This is called medi-gel. Theoretically, it can heal wounds like that," Shepard said and snapped her fingers for emphasis before spreading the gel over the wound. He grunted and hissed at the stinging pain that radiated from the wound when Shepard handled it roughly.

"It hasn't been tested before and don't ask me how it works, I don't know, I just need it to work."

Shepard admitted her hopes hadn't been exactly high when Tali had introduced the gel to her, but she was learning once again that she really should have more faith; the wound was healing right before her eyes.

"How's that note coming along?" Shepard then asked. Saren read it back and with Shepard's approval, signed it.

"Now to the fun part. I can demonstrate in detail to you what I did to Leng, or you can use the gun on yourself, no pain, no torture, you won't even feel it. I'll help you," Shepard said, her voice low and soft, almost calming as she watched Saren close his fingers around the grips. She clamped her gloved hand over his, angled the pistol so that the barrel was pointing slightly upward and held his hand steady.

Saren squeezed his eyes shut tightly, his breathing shallow and panicky, his chest heaving, cold sweat beginning to form on his skin. Shepard put her finger over his and squeezed the trigger, and the gun went off in a loud pop. Blood, bone fragments and brain matter splattered on the carpet and he slumped limply in his chair.

Shepard slowly let his arm fall down, leaving it as naturally as she could, the gun slipping from his grip and landing on the carpet with a soft thud. She undid the ties around his ankles, cleaned up any evidence of her presence in the apartment, opened the window just slightly and then went to grab one more thing from her backpack. It might not be enough to fool the forensic investigators into thinking he'd been dead already before Shepard had even escaped, but it was worth a shot, determining a time of death was difficult enough as it was even without someone tampering with the crime scene.

Shepard opened the jar that had holes on the top of it, and a small cloud of blow flies flew out, buzzing around for a moment before discovering their meal, settling over Saren's body, some of them disappearing into the cavity the bullet had made in his skull.


	8. Despise

Shepard had been watching Samantha's house from a distance for a couple of weeks now. Her first intention had been to go over and just say hello, but Tali had pointed out it probably wouldn't end well. Clearly, Samantha had moved on, she could easily decide to just call the authorities if Shepard showed up.

When she'd read the dossier Liara had compiled, Shepard had gotten jealous when she'd seen that Samantha had been married to a Maya Brooks for a couple of years now. At first, she couldn't figure out why she felt that way, she hadn't gotten jealous when Liara had mentioned her husband after Shepard had asked about it.

There was something delightfully weird and decadent about being naked in bed with someone and asking them about their husband. According to Liara, Javik was a man with a dry, dark sense of humor, and he complained about everything, but Liara loved him. Hearing that, Shepard hadn't felt jealous, she'd felt glad that Liara had moved on. She'd felt a bit guilty for sleeping with Liara despite knowing she was married, but at the same time, she refused to take full responsibility for that.

They'd spent the entire day in bed, over two decades of longing for each other and the frustration of not having been able to feel each other manifesting as the two of them fucking like wild animals at first, the act then morphing and melding from that to quiet, slow and passionate love making. Technically, it had only happened once, after that first day they'd seen each other, they hadn't had sex.

But even though she acknowledged she had no right to be jealous of Samantha, especially not after the way she'd just behaved with Liara, she felt jealous. She got angry when she thought about Maya Brooks touching Samantha. She got annoyed when she realized Samantha had moved on almost immediately after being released, _knowing_ she was carrying _Shepard's_ baby, it wasn't right, it wasn't fair, this was her family, and Shepard wanted what was hers. The big house with the white picket fence, the kid and the dog were supposed to be Shepard's family with Samantha, not Maya's.

Yet, here she was, walking home in the chilly late November afternoon, light breeze catching dead leaves and dragging them along the street, a thin fog hovering in the air. She was with Samantha who was holding the leashes of the two ridiculously large dogs that looked like muscular miniature bears (Legion had informed Shepard that the breed was Cane Corso, but Shepard was still convinced they were half-bears rather than dogs) while Maya carried a little boy -Shepard's little boy- on her shoulders, the kid holding onto her forehead as he pointed out things he could see now that he was this high up.

Maya Brooks was a federal special agent, probably one of the people working around the clock to find and capture Shepard.

"What's so special about her?" Shepard had snidely inquired earlier today upon being given this information.  
"Shepard Commander, it is merely a title," Legion had responded promptly.

 _Bless his heart,_ Shepard mused when she thought of Legion, _for his heart is in the right place, but Lord only knows where his brain is sometimes._

Maya and Samantha entered the yard and let the dogs loose once they were securely locked behind the sturdy white picket fence surrounding the yard. The dogs didn't run off, clearly, they were properly trained, as dogs that size should be.

Shepard climbed to the second floor of the house she was in, the one across the street from Samantha and Maya's. The owner had been away for the past two weeks, he'd surprised Shepard last night, but she'd managed to hide and quietly leave the house before he'd even realized she had broken in there to spy on the house across the street.

According to the data Legion had pulled up on him and analyzed to figure out any patterns in the owners' routine, he wouldn't be home for another couple of hours, unless he deviated from his daily routine, but she assumed he wouldn't. Most people didn't unless they had reason to believe they were being stalked which is when it became intentional, a conscious decision to break the pattern. Shepard was willing to bet people would be surprised if they ever realized just how predictable they could be.

Shepard went to a window on the second floor so she could see over the fence. Samantha entered the house while the boy stayed outside with Maya. She helped him climb on the swingset and gave him a push.

Shepard clenched her fists as she fought the urge to just walk over there and let the boy know she was his father. She should've been the one pushing him on a swing, chatting with him and making him laugh happily. He was her son. Hers.

 _I want what's mine._

* * *

Samantha woke up when she heard her son repeatedly say her name. She rose to rest her weight on her forearm and glanced at the clock. It was almost three in the morning.

"What's wrong, lil' guy?" she yawned when she saw him standing by her bed, clutching a frog-shaped stuffed toy to his chest.  
"There's someone in my room," he said and Samantha sighed a little, pulled the covers back and made room on the bed.

"You probably had a bad dream, but dreams can't hurt you. It's just your imagination. Come on, get in with me," Samantha said softly and he climbed in bed. He tucked his head under Samantha's chin and she put her arm around him, wrapped him up in the blanket and held him close. She realized he was shivering.

"Sweetheart, it's okay, it was just a dream," she tried assuring him.  
"There was a lady in my room!" he insisted again and Samantha felt her heart skip a beat and her chest suddenly felt like it was imploding.

All this time she had told herself Shepard wouldn't come after her. Even once she'd heard of Shepard's escape, she'd adamantly refused to accept that she would do that, and since it had been quiet for a long while now, she'd assumed Shepard wouldn't come here. She'd had no reason to think Shepard would know about the child either, and she doubted Shepard would come after her in the hopes of picking up where they'd left off on Omega. Surely she'd understood that while her feelings for Shepard had been genuine, it had been just a fling, it wouldn't work in the outside world?

Shepard had never come across as delusional. Slightly weird and very callous yes, but not delusional. Samantha didn't believe she'd come here thinking Samantha would just run away with her and spend the rest of her life on the run with a fugitive. Even after the news about Saren Arterius's suicide and his note (in which he'd expressed deep regret over never speaking up about what had really happened on Torfan that day when the events leading to Shepard's prosecution had taken place), Samantha knew Shepard wouldn't walk free.

She also didn't believe for a second that it had been a suicide. She didn't care that the reports on the news and the stories "The Cult Of Shepard" posted online detailing the timeline stated that Saren had taken his life prior to Shepard's escape.

She'd seen the way Shepard could slither into another person's head (Samantha had occasionally wondered if she herself had been indoctrinated by Shepard during her time in prison with her, because there were things she still couldn't explain about her own behavior from that time when she looked back on it all now) until they were willing to do anything for her; odds were Shepard had talked someone into killing Saren for her, or that she'd simply talked Saren himself into blowing his brains out. That theory was in conflict with the timeline, but Maya had explained to her that time of death wasn't an exact science, Shepard could've very well been there.

 _She wouldn't come after me,_ Samantha mentally assured herself once more and was about to close her eyes again when she realized what was off. The dogs were barking agitatedly as they paced back and forth, the soft thuds of their heavy paws easily audible. They never barked for no valid reason, they were trained guard dogs who wouldn't alert the house over a raccoon or a squirrel.

"Maya," Samantha whispered and reached behind her to shove at her sleeping wife. "Maya, get up, there's..." she stopped herself in the middle of the sentence, not wanting to scare her son any further by acknowledging that she too was now convinced there really _was_ someone in his room.

"What?" Brooks grumbled sleepily and turned to face Samantha, reaching to put her arm around her and pulled her closer while pushing herself against Samantha's back tighter.

"Would you go check Elliot's room, he's convinced there's a _strange lady_ in there," Samantha mumbled and Maya frowned at that, needing a long moment to process what she'd been told. Once she'd managed to piece it all together, she went to the safe embedded into the back of a closet, unlocked it and pulled out a revolver. She loaded it quickly and snuck out, closing the door behind her.

Samantha swallowed hard, listening to the dogs' barking, her arms wrapped tightly around Elliot as he pressed himself against her tighter.  
"I'm scared," he whimpered.

"It's okay, sweetheart, it's okay," Samantha whispered and nuzzled the top of his head, realizing she wouldn't be able to to convince him, she wasn't convincing herself either. She knew what Shepard was capable of, she knew exactly why some people knew Shepard only as "The Reaper". She seemed immortal and indestructible, Samantha had witnessed her surviving countless of different types of assaults when some of the other inmates had tried taking her out. Shepard's resilience was something Samantha had appreciated about her back on Omega but that was because back then, Shepard had been on her side. That wouldn't be the case now, at least not when Samantha would make it clear that she wouldn't go anywhere with Shepard, let alone allow Shepard to take her son.

Samantha heard the heavy footsteps approach the bedroom rapidly, the dogs were still barking. Samantha got out of bed and knelt down, pulling the covers up.

"Quick, hide," she whispered and Elliot crawled under the bed. "Whatever happens, don't make a sound. It's going to be okay," she then said and pulled the edge of the blanket back down to cover the gap between the bed and the floor, and stood up only a couple of seconds before Shepard burst into the room.

"Hello, Samantha," she greeted almost politely, like this was a completely normal situation.  
"How did you get in here?" Samantha asked when she could once again get a word out of her mouth after recovering from the shock of having Shepard in her house. She almost didn't recognize Shepard at first and looking at the difference a simple haircut and a dyejob did, it became obvious why Shepard hadn't been caught yet.

"I've been watching you and I noticed you close the doors leading from the front of the house to the back to keep the dogs out for the night. All the bedrooms are out of the dogs' reach, so it really was just a matter of picking the right window to climb in through," Shepard explained and Samantha ground her teeth. She'd repeatedly told Maya to let the dogs walk freely around the house even at night, but she hadn't agreed, she'd said their pacing kept her up.

"I want what's mine."

"I don't have anything of yours," Samantha denied and Shepard chuckled. She stepped closer to her and slowly snaked her arm around Samantha's waist, and to her shock, Samantha found herself easing into the half-embrace, wanting to feel Shepard against herself, realizing she'd missed her and the almost intoxicating feeling that overwhelmed her when Shepard was close.

"I don't appreciate being lied to," Shepard murmured as she cupped Samantha's cheek with her hand and ran her thumb over Samantha's lips.

"I'm not lying," Samantha said and pressed a small kiss on the pad of Shepard's thumb. A part of her was screaming at her to do something, fight back, get Shepard out of here somehow, anything, just as long as she'd do it quickly before Shepard would start looking around and before Elliot would lose it and just start crying. Another part of her was desperate to stupidly succumb to Shepard's charms, surrender, throw herself into her arms and relive moments from a few years back when everything had been horrible and simultaneously the happiest time of her life.

"Yes, you are, but I forgive you... for now," Shepard murmured, leaned in and pressed her lips onto Samantha's, slowly deepening the kiss, the tip of her tongue flicking over her lower lip. Samantha whimpered into the kiss, hating how much she loved being kissed by Shepard and how tingly it made her feel all over, she wanted to just melt into Shepard's arms. She felt weak in the best possible way.

"Get away from her, you bitch!" Maya's voice broke through the trance. There was a loud thud and Shepard turned slowly to face Maya. She managed to take a couple of steps toward her and Maya raised the weighty cast iron skillet she'd picked up to use as a weapon, not really wanting to shoot anyone despite having the gun handy. Maya had just prepared to hit her again when Shepard collapsed heavily onto the floor.


	9. Don't fear the reaper

Shepard blinked slowly and grimaced at the ache in the back of her head. There was blood on the side of her neck, the dried substance uncomfortably sticky. She glanced to the side and realized she was in the backseat of a car, handcuffs around her wrists and duct tape around her ankles binding her legs together.

Shepard didn't move or raise her head, she didn't want to let the driver know she was awake. There was no protective grate or plexiglass between the backseat and the driver, namely Brooks. Apparently she'd thought she'd make it to the destination (whatever it was, Shepard speculated they were headed to the nearest precinct where they'd keep her locked up until she would be transported back to Omega to wait for sentencing for the additional charges she'd have to face) before Shepard would come to. That was an advantage she could use.

Shepard hitched the cuff up her forearm as far as it would go, moving slowly and quietly. She then reached for the seat belt buckle clip and inserted it in between the double strand on the side of the cuff. She twisted hard to pry apart the cuff and break the rivet, the clip and the cuff digging into her flesh as she did. It took a while, especially since she had to be as quiet as possible and it hurt, but that didn't matter right now, what mattered was getting her hands free.

She didn't really have a plan for what came after getting herself free, but she knew she wouldn't have many seconds after getting the cuff off, the metallic click of it breaking would certainly get Brooks's attention and that would steal away the element of surprise. For a moment, Shepard contemplated on just sitting put until Brooks would pull over once they'd reach their destination, but then heard the approaching siren. Brooks hadn't wanted to wait for the police to come pick Shepard up, but she'd requested a police escort and they were catching up. That made Shepard's plan of a blitz attack followed by a mad dash problematic. She would need to take action before the rest of the escort would get here, so far there was only one car.

 _Don't think. Do something._

The words echoed in her mind softly dissipating into the hum of the car and the rivet of the handcuff finally broke under the pressure and Shepard's arm was freed with a loud click, the sharp edge of the broken metal leaving behind another wound on Shepard's forearm.

The moment Brooks heard the click, she began to turn back to look, but Shepard was faster, operating on instinct and muscle memory, not thinking, doing. She wrapped her left hand around the front seat's top, the handcuff still intact and stuck on her wrist clattering loudly against the window. She grabbed a hold of the opposite side of Brooks's head and forced her to tilt her head to the left, leaving her neck exposed as Shepard reached her other arm around the other side, closed her fingers around the broken handcuff and frantically stabbed the jagged edge into Brooks's throat, needing to do it repeatedly because there wasn't much room to gain momentum, but details like that had never stopped Shepard before.

Warm blood spilled in a generous stream when the artery was cut, the smell of blood filling the small space. Shepard grinned. She'd always associated that smell with good things, starting from the time she'd smelled it the first time in a situation not completely unlike this one; back when she'd accidentally killed her mother.

Brooks lost consciousness shortly after, losing the control of the vehicle. Shepard was just about to climb to the front seat but she forgot about the duct tape around her ankles and essentially tripped forward just when the car swerved off the road and hit a tree after crashing through the guard rail.

"Shiiit!" Shepard exclaimed when she flew through the windshield and was slammed sideways against the tree, her entire body cracking loudly under the force of the impact. She lost consciousness for a few seconds but something dragged her back to reality.

 _The fucking cop is coming,_ she thought when she remembered the cop car that had been following Brooks. She cursed mentally as she hurried to use the broken handcuff to cut through the duct tape around her ankles.

 _There's no time, move. Hide_.

Shepard grunted and exhaled deeply as she turned to lay on the ground and crawled under the wrecked car and waited.

"Jesus, what the hell..." a male voice wondered out loud. Shepard watched his uniformed legs approach the car followed by his partner.

"Shut up and stay sharp, Verner. Shepard can't be far. Augh, oh God. Well, I guess we can rule out a random accident. How the hell did Shepard even manage to do this?" a female voice spoke, pausing to stand by the driver's side, and Shepard could imagine her checking for Brooks's pulse in vain.

"So, what's next, Parasini?" the male, identified only as Verner, inquired while his partner radioed in what had happened here. Shepard couldn't make out Parasini's answer, but she didn't need to. She saw her legs move back toward the police car while Verner stood by the wreck. Shepard inched herself closer Verner and firmly wrapped her fingers around the sharp broken cuff, preparing to use it as a weapon once more.

Verner screamed like a banshee on fire when Shepard stabbed his Achilles tendon so hard it snapped and he lost his balance, falling to the ground. He was still yelling and trying to clutch at the injury when Shepard backed out from underneath the wreck, and he didn't even seem to notice her. Shepard waited for his partner to run to him and circled around the wreck, ducking to hide behind it until Parasini was over by Verner's side, asking him what the hell was wrong with him. When her attention was on Verner, Shepard dashed to the police car, got in and spun it around, driving off while officer Parasini uselessly chased after until she couldn't run anymore.

"Thanks for the assist, officers," Shepard laughed happily as she drove, simultaneously undoing the cuff around her left wrist with the handcuff key she'd discovered in the ashtray.

* * *

"Come on, Elliot, we have to go now, sweetie," Samantha gently rushed the sleepy boy.

"What about Grunt and Wrex?" he whined, his mouth twisting into a pre-cry pout as he pointed at the two large dogs that stood in attention by the the entrance to the living room, staring at their protectees, confused.  
"We will pick them up in the morning, but right now we have to get to grandma's, okay, honey?" Samantha reasoned with him and picked him up into her arms when she saw the flashes of blue.

"Oh, God, finally," she exhaled and hurried outside to get into the police car Maya had promised to have pick Samantha and Elliot up. She was half along the driveway when the door opened and the officer stepped out from the car, only it wasn't an officer, it was a demoness.

Samantha skidded to a stop when Shepard stood up. She was covered in blood, generous amounts of it caked into her hair and face, and even more of it covering her arms and the front of her shirt. In addition to the blood, her clothes were torn and dirty, something had happened between here and where Shepard had turned back at. Shepard took a step toward her, the shades of red and blue radiating from the police car's rooftop lights washing over Shepard offering mere glimpses of the inhuman look on Shepard's face. She was smiling, and it was a genuine smile, but not a warm one.

 _Maya's dead,_ Samantha realized.

She wanted to turn and run back into the house but she couldn't move, she was mesmerized, paralyzed, stuck staring at Shepard. It wasn't until Elliot started screaming and crying because he was terrified that Samantha managed to yank herself free from whatever had possessed her to stand still. She slammed the door shut behind her and ran toward the back door, but stopped when she realized that the furious thudding sounds of Shepard ramming herself against the door ceased.

"Mommy...!"

"Shh... shh-shh, Elliot, listen... we gotta be very quiet, okay, lil' guy? Come on..." Samantha hushed softly, doing her best to hide the fact that she too was terrified. If Shepard was no longer at the front door, she could be waiting for them at the backdoor and they'd end up running straight into her arms if they exited that way.

"I'm scared!"  
"I know, but look, there's nothing to worry about, Wrex and Grunt are here, they'll protect you," Samantha said, barely managing to conceal the quiver in her voice. She dug out her phone and scrolled through the contacts until she found Maya's partner's name. She would get here faster than anyone the emergency dispatch could send.

"Ashley, I need your help," Samantha mumbled into the phone.  
"Traynor, what's wrong? Where's Brooks, she was supposed to be here by now."

Samantha didn't want to think about it. As much as she would've wanted to hold onto to the hope that Maya was still alive, she found it highly unlikely. If she were, Shepard wouldn't be stalking around the house right now. She explained the situation to Ashley who promised she'd hurry over as fast as she could.

"Just do your best to hide in the meanwhile, okay?" Ashley said and ended the call. Samantha inhaled sharply when she heard glass break somewhere in the back of the house and the dogs hurried over to investigate, low growls emanating from both of them.

 _I regret wanting a big house_ , Samantha thought sheepishly when she tried to listen to figure out where Shepard was moving at. She doubted Shepard knew every detail of the house's floorplan despite her obviously extensive research of the house, but she was relatively certain Shepard would know enough to figure out a way to intercept any attempt Samantha could make to get out of the house via the obvious exits.

Samantha reached to quietly push the living room door open and snuck out, carrying Elliot with her. She continued along the hallway toward the kitchen, if she could make it there, she could exit through the side door which led into the garage.

"There you are," Shepard said as she emerged from the stairwell which led into the basement. Samantha screamed, startled, and swiveled around on her heel and ran back. She heard the dogs bark and the loud, rapid thuds of Wrex's paws could be heard from behind as Grunt approached from the opposite direction, the dogs attempting a pincer attack.

Samantha glanced back over her shoulder, wishing Shepard wouldn't get a chance to injure them but if push came to shove, she'd accept that it was a sacrifice worth making if it meant that Samantha could escape with Elliot. Grunt leapt at Shepard and the moment he did, Shepard turned slightly, using the dog's momentum against him as she hooked her arm around his midsection and slammed him to the floor, right ontop of Wrex who had been approaching from the opposite side.

"Nice doggies," Shepard said, sounding genuinely gentle as she hurried to push the dazed dogs into the stairwell she'd emerged from and closed the door, locking them in.

 _No! God damn it!_ Samantha cursed internally when she heard soft thuds as the dogs stumbled down the steps.  
 _Where do I go? Where do I go?_

"I can smell youuu," Shepard called out, her heavy footsteps following Samantha. She turned a corner and entered through the double doors leading into the dining room, trying to be quiet but it was proving almost impossible. She could swear she was breathing so loudly it could be heard in the next town over. Elliot, on the other hand, was quiet, too quiet. He was blankly staring, his eyes wide and mouth slightly open. He was terrified, too shocked to even blink. Samantha hated to think it, but right now, that was probably a good thing.

"Come out, come out wherever you are!" Shepard yelled and Samantha heard her kick a door open, but the sound came from further away, she was moving in the wrong direction which was good. Samantha snuck through the dining room and into the kitchen, ducking behind the counters as she went.

"You thought you could just slip out with what's mine?" Shepard said, her voice getting too close too quickly. "You know I'm going to find you! And when I do..."

 _Oh, God,_ Samantha inhaled sharply and held her breath, flattening herself against the island in the kitchen. _No, no, no, don't come in here,_ she mentally ranted when Shepard's footsteps approached. She was standing right behind Samantha, if she'd lean forward just a bit, she would notice her.

 _Please. Please. Please. Don't breathe. Don't make a sound,_ she prayed, hoping Elliot wouldn't make a sound either. He was sitting on the floor and looking like he was completely unaware of what was happening.

Samantha waited as still and silent as she could until she heard Shepard's boot impact on another door to kick it open. Samantha swallowed hard, took a moment to listen once more, and when it was quiet, she slowly dared to peek over the counter.

"Heeere's daddy!" Shepard announced in a sing-songy voice as she popped up from behind the opposite side of the counter where she'd been hiding, waiting for Samantha to move. She screamed and tried to scamper back to keep away from Shepard, but she reached over the counter and grabbed Samantha by the hair, yanking her toward herself and pulling her over the counter.

 _She just threw her shoe, she was waiting here the entire time,_ Samantha realized when she noticed Shepard was missing one boot. She slammed Samantha onto the floor and straddled her midsection, pressing her shins against Samantha's thighs hard to pin her legs down for the most part.

"This will hurt me more than it hurts you," Shepard growled as she wrapped her hands around Samantha's throat and leaned forward, squeezing hard and pressing with her body weight for added force.  
"Shepard... don't..." Samantha coughed.

"I told you what I'd do. I told you I'm going to crush your windpipe and you will suffocate..." Shepard said. Samantha gripped Shepard's wrists, trying to pry her hands from around her throat, but it wasn't making a difference. She noticed the cut in Shepard's forearm and desperately reached for it, pressing the tips of her fingers in as deep as she could and then yanked downward, stretching the wound. Shepard sucked in a hissing breath through her teeth but didn't loosen her grip.

"I suppose I did leave out the part about what a painful and terrifying way it is to die," she said, exhaling slowly, her breath shuddering as she strained.  
"Please..." Samantha gasped, tears slipping from her eyes as she blinked repeatedly, struggling to stay conscious, to live, when the black spots began vignetting her vision, slowly drowning everything in darkness.

"Oh... no tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering," Shepard said, her voice low and calm, loving even as she pushed her thumb harder into Samantha's trachea, the cartilage bending and fracturing little by little under the pressure.

 _I don't want to die like this._

"Sweet dreams, my love," Shepard whispered and leaned to kiss her forehead when Samantha stopped struggling, her last breath taken and consumed. Gone.

* * *

Shepard circled around the island in the kitchen and realized Elliot wasn't there anymore. She called out his name repeatedly as she looked around the house, and when she finally caught a glimpse of him running out through the backdoor, she followed.

"Federal agent, stop right there!" a female voice yelled the moment when Shepard emerged from the house.  
"I want what's mine!" Shepard yelled furiously. Ashley put her arm around Elliot's shoulders protectively as the boy clung to her legs.

"Move a muscle and I'll blow your fucking head off!" Ashley threatened, aiming her pistol at her.  
"Good luck trying," Shepard growled and lunged at her. The first bullet hit her shoulder, and she staggered but didn't stop.

"He's... mine!" Shepard growled and continued forward, and Ashley pulled the trigger again. This time she aimed for Shepard's leg, but it wasn't enough, it was as if she couldn't even feel the bullets. She aimed higher, and pulled the trigger one more time, the projectile piercing Shepard's chest and ripping through her heart.

"My..." she strained to say, falling to her knees, trying one more time to reach him. She just wanted to hold him, at least once, let him know who she was, why she was here, apologize for scaring him.

"...son..."

The torn muscle finally gave in, unable to keep pumping blood and keep Shepard alive any longer, life slowly draining from her, a moment of calmness she'd never experienced prior to this moment washing over her before her final breath passed her lips, turning into a pale cloud in the cold night air and disappeared into the dark.


	10. Epilogue

"Elliot Shepard could be a valuable asset to us, but if we lose him into the system, there's no way we'll be able to track him down discreetly when he comes of age," Miranda Lawson briefed her boss. He took a long drag of his cigarette and swirled the bourbon in his glass.

"And you think he's worth the wait and the effort?"

"I believe so," Miranda said. The Illusive Man downed the last of his drink and put his cigarette out before lighting another immediately after.

On some level he assumed Miranda had to know she wasn't fooling him, her motivations weren't just to ensure the boy could be studied in case he'd inherited his father's resilience. Her endgame was to have a child, namely pull enough strings around the system to ensure she would be able to adopt Elliot.

Frankly, The Illusive Man had considered Miranda's research regarding "The Entity" a load of nonsense. He'd almost cut the funding to the project but then Miranda had shown him the evidence to validate her claims.

She'd studied Shepard extensively over the past few years now, she'd looked at the video footage available from combat zones Shepard had been in, and most recently the video from the dash cams installed into the vehicles that had been at the Traynor house when Shepard had gotten gunned down.

She'd gone through the footage slowly, frame-by-frame and she'd seen it. The Illusive Man had seen it too.

A being tethered to Shepard, surrounding her like a force field of some kind, protecting her from harm at least to some extent. Shepard hadn't been indestructible, but she'd been able to take incredible amounts of damage without flinching, even more so when under the influence of combat stimulants.

Miranda had theorized the entity was a remnant of Shepard's twin, his soul looking after Shepard like a guardian angel, if one was feeling dramatic and romantic enough to use such terms. The Illusive Man wasn't interested in drama or romance, he was interested in soldiers like Shepard, and definitely in the entity which had accompanied Shepard.

If that could somehow be replicated and utilized, the Alliance troops high on painkillers and stimulants wouldn't stand a chance against Cerberus troops. The question was, what had caused it and how it could be replicated if at all. Starting by finding out if Elliot had a "guardian angel" would be a good start.

Considering the circumstances his mother died under and the close proximity to Elliot she'd been in, Miranda had theorized that if there ever was a way to tether a soul (if such a thing existed) to another living person, close proximity and intense emotional distress and connection would be the key. In other words, for this project, they'd need traumatized children, starting from Elliot Shepard.

"Then see to it that we don't lose him."


	11. Author's notes

And we are finished, thanks hanging around to read this "Halloween to N7"-so-called special, I hope you had at least some fun. Also, a HUGE thank you to TheMulletWhisperer for beta-reading and playing idea-ping-pong with me and for listening when I rambled on and on about plot twists I never used. xD

Now, if you were playing the "spot a line from a horror movie, get an air guitar!"-easter egg hunt, here's your air guitar! *hands over* And here are the correct answers to which line(s) from which movies.

Chapter 2:  
"We all go a little mad sometimes."  
"Yes. Sometimes just one time can be enough." |Psycho

"All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl" |The Shining

"If I wanted to listen to an asshole, I'd fart." | House of 1000 corpses

Chapter 3:  
"Here's to five miserable months on the wagon, and all the irreparable harm it has caused me."| The Shining

Chapter 4:  
"I should warn you princess- the first time tends to get a little messy." | Freddy vs. Jason

Chapter 5:  
"Why are you screaming when I haven't even cut you yet?" | A nightmare on Elm Street (2010)

"Your suffering will be legendary, even in hell." | Hellraiser

"Shepard... whatever you're thinking about doing... please, don't do it."  
"Shh, darling... trust me." | Misery

Chapter 8:  
"Get away from her, you bitch!" | Aliens

Chapter 9:  
"Oh... no tears, please. It's a waste of good suffering." | Hellraiser


End file.
